Top economists call on world leaders to set up an international panel on inequality

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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Hundreds of top economists and other experts, including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, called on Friday for the world to set up an independent international panel on income and wealth inequality.

The call in an open letter came before the Group of 20 summit in South Africa next weekend, when a report on global inequality chaired by Nobel Prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz is due to be presented to world leaders.

That report, which was released this month, said that the world is facing an inequality emergency as well as a climate emergency, leading to more political instability and conflicts, and “decreased confidence in democracy.”

Between 2000 and 2024, the richest 1% captured 41% of all new wealth created in the world, the report said. Meanwhile, one in four people globally — around 2.3 billion people — now face moderate or severe food insecurity, meaning they regularly skip meals. That number has increased by 335 million people since 2019, the report said.

The report recommended a new International Panel on Inequality to advise governments on how to address the issue in the same way the U.N.-appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does to help develop climate policies.

The economists and inequality experts, which include Nobel laureates and former senior officials at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, said in their letter addressed to world leaders that they were concerned “that extreme concentrations of wealth translate into undemocratic concentrations of power, unraveling trust in our societies and polarizing our politics.”

South Africa, which hosts the G20 summit on Nov. 22-23, wants global inequality to be one of its main topics, even as South Africa itself is ranked as the most unequal country in the world by the World Bank.

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