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SECTION 1 2 3
EXTREME INEQUALITY
Caste, race, location, religion, ethnicity, as well as a range of other identities
that are ascribed to people from birth, play a significant role in creating
divisions between haves and have-nots. In Mexico, maternal mortality rates
for indigenous women are six times the national average and are as high as
many countries in Africa. 217 In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Peoples remain the country’s most significantly disadvantaged group,
disproportionately affected by poverty, unemployment, chronic illness,
disability, lower life expectancy and higher levels of incarceration.
Around the world, these different inequalities come together to define people’s
opportunities, income, wealth and asset ownership, and even their life spans.
CONDEMNED TO STAY POOR FOR GENERATIONS
Beyond the impact that rising economic inequality has on poverty reduction
and growth, it is becoming increasingly clear that the growing divide between
rich and poor is setting in motion a number of negative social consequences
that affect us all.
It would be hard to find anyone to disagree with the idea that everyone
should be given an equal chance to succeed in life, and that a child born into
poverty should not have to face the same economic destiny as their parents.
There should be equality of opportunity so that people can move up the
socioeconomic ladder; in other words, there should be the possibility of social
mobility. This is an idea that is deeply entrenched in popular narratives and
reinforced through dozens of Hollywood films, whose rags to riches stories
continue to feed the myth of the American Dream in the USA and around
the world.
“
That’s why they call it
the American Dream,
because you have to be
asleep to believe it.
GEORGE CARLIN
COMEDIAN
“
However, in both rich and poor countries, high inequality has led to diminished
social mobility. 218 In these countries the children of the rich will largely replace
their parents in the economic hierarchy, as will the children of those living
in poverty.
‘My parents were not educated. My mother did not go to school. My father
attended a government primary school up to Grade 5 and understood
the importance of education. He encouraged me to work extra hard
in class. I was the first person in either my family or my clan to attend
a government secondary school. Later, I went to university and did a
teacher training course before attending specialized NGO sector training
and got the opportunity to do development studies overseas.
I understand today that nearly 75 percent of the intake at the university
is from private schools. University is beyond the reach of the ordinary
Malawian. I cannot be sure, but I fear that if I were born today into the
same circumstances, I would have remained a poor farmer in the village.’
John Makina, Country Director for Oxfam in Malawi
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