Our economy is broken, with hundreds of millions of people living in extreme poverty while huge rewards go to those at the very top.
Universal health, education and other public services reduce the gap between rich and poor, and between genders. Fairer taxation of the wealthiest can help pay for them.
Read our report ‘Public Good or Private Wealth?’ to learn how we can achieve this.
See the report’s methodology here.
Without reducing inequality, meeting SDG 1 to eliminate poverty will be impossible. In 2017, Development Finance International (DFI) and Oxfam produced the first index to measure the commitment of governments to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. The index is based on a new database of indicators, now covering 157 countries, which measures government action on social spending, tax and labour rights – three areas found to be critical to reducing the gap.
This second edition of the Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index finds that countries such as South Korea, Namibia and Uruguay are taking strong steps to reduce inequality. Sadly, countries such as India and Nigeria do very badly overall, as does the USA among rich countries, showing a lack of commitment to closing the inequality gap.
The report recommends that all countries should develop national inequality action plans to achieve SDG 10 on reducing inequality. These plans should include delivery of universal, public and free health and education and universal social protection floors. They should be funded by increasing progressive taxation and clamping down on exemptions and tax dodging. Countries must also respect union rights and make women’s rights at work comprehensive, and they should raise minimum wages to living wages.
The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index 2018 – Summary.PDF
The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index 2018 – Full Report.PDF
The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index 2018 – Methodology.PDF
They appear to deprive developing countries of more than NZ$150 million every year—money that is urgently needed to meet the health needs of people in these countries—while vastly overcharging for their products. It is estimated that New Zealand loses NZ$21 million every year.
Read and download the full report below:
Prescription for Poverty- A Bitter Pill – Oxfam 2018 – Summary & Methodology.pdf
A Bitter Pill (NZ figures) – Oxfam NZ 2018 – Full Report.pdf
At the top, big supermarkets and other corporate food giants dominate global food markets, allowing them to squeeze value from vast supply chains that span the globe, while at the bottom the bargaining power of small-scale farmers and workers has been steadily eroded in many of the countries from which they source.
The result is widespread human suffering among the women and men producing food for supermarkets around the world. From forced labour aboard fishing vessels in Southeast Asia, to poverty wages on Indian tea plantations and hunger faced by workers on South African grape farms, human and labour rights abuses are all too common in food supply chains.
In an era of gross global inequality and escalating climate change, this business model is increasingly unsustainable. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Governments, food companies, small-scale farmers and workers, and citizens around the world can all help to rebalance power in food supply chains and ensure they more fairly reward those producing our food. The supermarket sector is ripe for change.
There is no justifiable reason that the human and labour rights of women and men supplying supermarkets cannot be respected. There is no moral excuse for anyone producing our food to go hungry. This report launches Oxfam’s new campaign to expose the root causes behind human suffering in food supply chains and to mobilise the power of people around the world to help end it, starting with a focus on the role of supermarkets.
This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over. 82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, and nothing went to the bottom 50%.
Dangerous, poorly paid work for the many is supporting extreme wealth for the few. Women are in the worst work, and almost all the super-rich are men. Governments must create a more equal society by prioritising ordinary workers and small-scale food producers instead of the rich and powerful.
Supercharged storms, more intense droughts, rising seas and other impacts of climate change all magnify existing vulnerabilities and the likelihood of displacement, disproportionately affecting low-income countries, women, children and indigenous peoples.
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