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From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

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FROM POVERTY TO POWERFor poor people, such inequalities cancel out the benefits of livingin a better-off society. Average income is three times higher in Brazilthan it is in Viet Nam.Yet the poorest 10 per cent of Brazilians earn lessthan the poorest 10 per cent of Vietnamese. 9 Here <strong>to</strong>o, rich countrieshave nothing <strong>to</strong> brag about. The infant mortality rate among indigenousCanadians is, on average, two <strong>to</strong> three times the national rate,and the average indigenous person will die 20 years earlier than theaverage Canadian. 10Regionally, Latin America is renowned for a level of inequality thatis ‘extensive, pervasive, and resilient’ 11 and for the exceptional slice ofnational wealth that is owned by the very rich. Statistics show the USA<strong>to</strong> have a similarly skewed (and worsening) distribution of incomeand wealth. 12 Research in Africa suggests that, at least in terms ofincome, inequalities are as high as in Latin America, a finding thatmay surprise those who assume that, at African levels of poverty, allare more or less equal. Asia contains countries with low levels ofinequality (Taiwan, Viet Nam) and others such as China, whereinequality is rapidly approaching Latin American, US, and Africanlevels. 13Nowhere is the injustice of inequality more evident than in thephenomenon of ‘missing women’. Due <strong>to</strong> discrimination against girlsand women, the world’s female population is lower than it should becompared with males; discrimination starts even before birth throughselective abortion and then continues as girl children are neglectedwith respect <strong>to</strong> nutrition and health care (compared with their brothers).Recent estimates put the number of missing women at 101.3 million –more than the <strong>to</strong>tal number of people killed in all the wars of thebloody twentieth century. Eighty million of these are Indian orChinese: a staggering 6.7 per cent of the expected female population ofChina, and 7.9 per cent of the expected female population of India. 14WHY INEQUALITY MATTERS 15<strong>Oxfam</strong> and other NGOs have long highlighted the moral repugnanceof the world’s yawning social and economic divides. There is somethingdeeply unjust about a system that allows 800 million people <strong>to</strong>go hungry, while an epidemic of obesity blights millions of lives in richcountries (and increasingly, in cities in developing countries).4

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