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SECTION 1 2 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Nthabiseng was born to a poor black family in Limpopo, a rural area in
South Africa. On the same day, Pieter was born nearby in a rich suburb of
Cape Town. Nthabiseng’s mother had no formal schooling and her father
is unemployed, whereas Pieter’s parents both completed university
education at Stellenbosch University and have well-paid jobs.
As a result, Nthabiseng and Pieter’s life chances are vastly different.
Nthabiseng is almost one and a half times as likely to die in the first year
of her life as Pieter. 1 He is likely to live more than 15 years longer than
Nthabiseng. 2
Pieter will complete on average 12 years of schooling and will most
probably go to university, whereas Nthabiseng will be lucky if she
gets one year. 3 Such basics as clean toilets, clean water or decent
healthcare 4 will be out of her reach. If Nthabiseng has children there
is a very high chance they will also grow up equally poor. 5
While Nthabiseng and Pieter do not have any choice about where they
are born, their gender, or the wealth and education of their parents,
governments do have a choice to intervene to even up people’s life
chances. Without deliberate action though, this injustice will be
repeated in countries across the world.
This thought experiment is taken from the World Development Report 2006.
Oxfam has updated the facts on life chances in South Africa. 6
From Ghana to Germany, South Africa to Spain, the gap between rich and poor
is rapidly increasing, and economic inequality * has reached extreme levels.
In South Africa, inequality is greater today than at the end of Apartheid. 7
The consequences are corrosive for everyone. Extreme inequality corrupts
politics, hinders economic growth and stifles social mobility. It fuels crime and
even violent conflict. It squanders talent, thwarts potential and undermines
the foundations of society.
Crucially, the rapid rise of extreme economic inequality is standing in the way
of eliminating global poverty. Today, hundreds of millions of people are living
without access to clean drinking water and without enough food to feed their
families; many are working themselves into the ground just to get by. We can
only improve life for the majority if we tackle the extreme concentration of
wealth and power in the hands of elites.
Oxfam’s decades of experience in the world’s poorest communities have taught
us that poverty and inequality are not inevitable or accidental, but the result
of deliberate policy choices. Inequality can be reversed. The world needs
* Inequality has many different dimensions, including race, gender, geography and
economy, which rarely work in isolation. This report is primarily concerned with the
concentration of financial resources and wealth in the hands of the few, which can
affect political, social and cultural processes to the detriment of the most vulnerable.
As such, in this report we use the term ‘inequality’ to refer to extreme economic (wealth
and income) inequality. When referring to the various dimensions of inequality we make
these distinctions.
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