一份新报告发现，冠状病毒大流行加剧了世界各地贫富之间的巨大财政差距。
根据该研究小组周二发布的分析，去年全球亿万富翁的财富份额增长是自 1995 年世界不平等实验室开始记录以来的最大增幅。仅在 2020 年，他们的净资产就增长了超过 3.6 万亿美元，将他们在全球家庭财富中的份额提高到 3.5%。
与此同时，根据分析引用的世界银行估计，这场大流行使大约 1 亿人陷入极端贫困，到 2021 年，全球贫困人口总数将增至 7.11 亿。如果许多发达国家没有采取救济措施来保护其居民免受 Covid-19 大流行带来的经济影响，那么更多人将陷入贫困。
该报告的主要作者兼实验室联合主任卢卡斯·尚塞尔说：“新冠病毒危机加剧了非常富有的人和其他人口之间的不平等。” “然而，在富裕国家，政府干预阻止了贫困的大规模增加，而贫穷国家的情况并非如此。”
《世界不平等报告》基于全球 100 多名研究人员四年多的工作。加州大学伯克利分校的长期不平等问题专家 Emmanuel Saez 和 Gabriel Zucman 以及巴黎经济学院的 Thomas Piketty 与 Chancel 协调了这份报告。
尽管 Covid-19 加深了贫富差距，但世界长期以来一直不平等。报告称，近几十年来，富裕国家的金融放松管制、私有化和较少累进税制以及新兴经济体的大规模私有化有助于提高富人的财富。它指出，全球不平等已接近 20 世纪早期西方帝国主义巅峰时期的水平。
“我们一直在做的工作确实表明，事实上，这些主张——或者这种涓滴经济学的想法——并没有通过数据审查，”钱塞尔说。 “从过去 40 年的数据中得出的关键教训是，降低最高税率并没有像它们应该触发的那样引发所有人的繁荣。”
报告建议对富人征税以产生收入，政府可以用这些收入来减少不平等并投资于教育、健康和生态措施。在美国，一些民主党人最近提出了一项计划，向亿万富翁征税，以支付他们提议的社会安全网扩张计划，但这一努力很快就消退了。
以下是该报告的另外五项发现：
全球财富和收入差距巨大
根据分析，到 2021 年，全球最富有的 10% 的人口控制着全球 76% 的财富。相比之下，最底层的 50% 只拥有 2% 的股份。与此同时，中间的 40% 拥有 22%。
就收入而言，收入最高的 10% 占全球收入的 52%，而收入最低的 50% 仅占全球收入的 8%。中间的 40% 占 39%。
富人越来越富有
报告发现，1995 年至 2021 年间，前 1% 的人占全球财富增长的 38%，而后 50% 的人仅占 2%。
富人的财富以更快的速度增长——在此期间每年增长 3% 到 9%。但最贫困的那一半人的财富每年仅增长 3% 至 4%。而且由于他们拥有的财富很少，因此整体金额并没有增加多少。
贫富差距因地区而异
拉丁美洲的前 10% 人控制着 77% 的财富，而后 50% 人只拥有不到 1% 的财富，这两者之间的差距最大。
相比之下，欧洲的差距最小。前 10% 的人拥有总财富的 58%，而后 50% 的人拥有 4%。
Chancel 说，为低收入和中产阶级居民提供的大量公共项目——包括免费教育、医疗保健和文化——是欧洲社会不平等程度较低的原因之一。
他说：“欧洲凭借其非常慷慨的公共服务获取体系，迄今为止已经能够遏制不平等现象的加剧，而美国在过去几十年中却没有那么大。”
全球收入差距有所缩小，但仍然很高
1980 年以来，随着中国和其他一些发展中大国赶上北美和欧洲，全球收入差距（工资、薪金、利息和股息等收入）有所下降。
“中国、印度、巴西和新兴国家的平均收入增长速度超过欧洲和美国，”Chancel 说。 “由于这种影响，生活在中国的人和生活在世界其他地方的人之间的全球不平等现象有所减少。”
2020 年，全球前 10% 人口的平均收入比后 50% 人口的平均收入高 38 倍，而 1980 年则高出 53 倍。 然而，目前的水平与 1910 年的收入差距相当，当时平均收入为全球前 10% 高出 41 倍。
但是，即使中国和印度等新兴国家的平均收入在增加，这些国家内部的不平等也在加剧。
“这确实减缓了减少全球不平等方面的进展，”他说。 “这也减缓了减贫方面的进展。”
该研究调整了各国的收入以考虑商品和服务成本的差异，这种做法被称为购买力平价。
虽然该报告的大部分数据侧重于税前收入不平等和政府福利转移，但研究人员还研究了这些因素对差距的影响。他们发现，虽然税收和转移支付适度减少了不平等，但在已经非常不平等的地区，差距仍然“非常大”。
女性收入仍落后于男性
该分析提供了按性别划分的全球收入不平等的初步估计。
2015 年至 2020 年期间，女性在工作总收入中的份额略低于 35%。
但这个数字因国家而异，从不到 10% 到 45% 不等。这一比例在前苏联国家最高，在撒哈拉以南非洲和中东的部分地区最低。
报告发现，按照目前的增长速度，女性的收入需要一个多世纪才能与男性持平。
As millions fell into poverty during the pandemic, billionaires' wealth soared
The coronavirus pandemic has worsened the massive financial gap between rich and poor around the world, a new report has found.
Global billionaires last year enjoyed the steepest increase in their share of wealth since the World Inequality Lab began keeping records in 1995, according to the research group's analysis released Tuesday. Their net worth grew by more than $3.6 trillion in 2020 alone, boosting their share of global household wealth to 3.5%.
At the same time, the pandemic pushed about 100 million people into extreme poverty, raising the global total to 711 million in 2021, according to a World Bank estimate cited by the analysis. Even more people would have fallen into poverty had many developed nations not enacted relief efforts to shield their residents from the financial fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The Covid crisis has exacerbated inequalities between the very wealthy and the rest of the population," said Lucas Chancel, the report's lead author and lab's co-director. "Yet, in rich countries, government intervention prevented a massive rise in poverty, this was not the case in poor countries."
The World Inequality Report is based on more than four years of work by more than 100 researchers around the globe. Longtime inequality experts Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, both at the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, coordinated the report with Chancel.
While Covid-19 has deepened the divide between rich and poor, the world has long been unequal. Financial deregulation, privatization and less progressive taxation in richer countries and large-scale privatization in emerging economies has helped boost the fortunes of the wealthy in recent decades, the report said. Global inequality is close to where it was at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century, it noted.
"The work that we've been doing really shows that, in fact, these claims -- or this idea of trickle-down economics -- does not pass the scrutiny of data," Chancel said. "Key lessons from the past 40 years of data is that the cuts in top tax rates have not triggered prosperity for all, as they were supposed to trigger."
The report recommends levying a tax on the wealthy to generate revenue that governments can use to reduce inequality and invest in education, health and ecological measures. In the US, some Democrats recently floated a plan to tax billionaires to pay for their proposed social safety net expansion, but the effort quickly faded.
Here are five more findings of the report:
Global wealth and income gaps are huge
The richest 10% of the global population controls 76% of the world's wealth in 2021, according to the analysis. By contrast, the bottom 50% owns a mere 2%. The middle 40%, meanwhile, owns 22%.
When it comes to income, the top 10% captures 52% of global income, while the bottom 50% earns only 8%. The middle 40% makes 39%.
The rich are getting even wealthier
The top 1% captured 38% of global wealth growth between 1995 and 2021, while the bottom 50% secured just 2%, the report found.
The fortunes of the wealthy expanded at a much faster rate -- between 3% and 9% per year during that period. But the poorest half saw their wealth grow only between 3% and 4% per year. And since they own very little wealth, the overall amount did not rise much.
The wealth gap varies greatly by region
Latin America has the largest divide between the top 10%, which controls 77% of the wealth, and bottom 50%, which owns a scant 1%.
By contrast, Europe has the smallest gap. The top 10% owns 58% of total wealth versus 4% for the bottom 50%.
The large number of public programs that are available to low-income and middle class residents -- including free education, health care and culture -- are among the reasons why Europe is a less unequal society, Chancel said.
"Europe, with its very generous system of access to public services, has been able so far to contain the rise of inequalities, whereas the US has not been as much able to do so over the past decades," he said.
The global income divide has narrowed a bit, but remains high
The global income gap, which accounts for earnings such as wages, salaries, interest and dividends, has declined somewhat since 1980, as China and some other large developing countries catch up with North America and Europe.
"Average incomes have been increasing faster in China, in India, in Brazil, in the emerging world than in Europe and than in the USA," Chancel said. "Because of this effect, you have a reduction of global inequalities between those who live in China and those who live in other parts of the world."
The average income of the global top 10% was 38 times higher than that of the bottom 50% in 2020, compared to 53 times higher in 1980. However, the current level is comparable to the income gap in 1910, when the average income of the global top 10% was 41 times higher.
But even with average incomes on the rise in emerging nations such as China and India, inequality within these countries has increased.
"This has really slowed progress in terms of reduction of global inequalities," he said. "And this has also slowed progress in terms of reduction of poverty."
The study adjusts incomes in countries to account for differences in the cost of goods and services, a practice known as purchasing power parity.
While much of the report's data focuses on income inequality before taxes and government benefits transfers, the researchers also examined the impact of these factors on the gap. They found that while taxes and transfers modestly reduce inequality, the divide remains "extremely high" in regions that were already very unequal.
Women's income still lags behind earnings of men
The analysis provides the first estimates of global earnings inequality by gender.
Women's share of total income from work stands at just under 35% for the 2015 to 2020 period.
But the figure varies widely by country, ranging from less than 10% to 45%. The share is highest in the former Soviet Union countries and the lowest is in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
At the current rate of growth, it will take more than a century for women's earnings to reach parity with men's, the report found.
