ASIA - Wealth inequality: a wound for the continent

New Delhi (Agenzia Fides) - Among the top 15 most populous countries on the planet, eight are in Asia, but this continent which represents, with China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, half of the world population - estimated by the "World Population Review" (WPR) Center for Demographic Data at 7.794 billion people in 2019 - holds another primacy according to the WPR, an independent and non-profit organization, in the ranking of wealth inequality by country . According to data released at the end of 2020, Asia is present in half of the top ten places on the list. We can cite Thailand (6th), the Philippines (8th), Saudi Arabia (9th) and Indonesia (10th) to which we could add Russia (2nd), since the majority of its territory is located in Asia.
Wealth inequality (or also “wealth gap”) is estimated on the basis of the unequal distribution of activities among the residents of a country. Wealth includes the value of cars, houses, savings, investments and personal valuables so that its unequal distribution results in unequal living standards. The World Population Review suggests that "globalization has reduced global inequality between nations but increased inequality within them" and that, in general, "developing countries are characterized by greater inequality than developed countries". The research is based on the Gini index, or "Gini coefficient", statistically measures the distribution and was developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini.
In the analysis of the Asian cases, Thailand and Indonesia are countries where wealth and prosperity are increasing sharply but where wealth remains extremely concentrated in the hands of very few people. Today there are many ways to measure these kinds of parameters: the British NGO Oxfam publishes a report every year, while the World Inequality Database (WID.world) is considered the "largest database available on the historical development of the global distribution of income and wealth, both within countries and among them".
Goal 10 is also focused on inequality, not just economic, among the Sustainable Development Goals, launched by the UN with the so-called Agenda 2030. The goal aims at the growth of the income of the poorest with a view to their empowerment and their social integration to guarantee equal opportunities and a regularized and safe human migration in addition to a rise in power of the developing countries within the framework of the decision-making process within international economic and financial institutions. (MG-PA) (Agenzia Fides, 22/1/2020)

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