Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Editorials

Immorality of inaction on inequality

BMJ 2017; 356 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j556 (Published 08 February 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;356:j556

Rapid Response:

Re: Immorality of inaction on inequality

While I fully agree that inequality matters, is related to poorer health outcomes and ought to be tackled not just for economic and public health reasons but primarily for moral ones I disagree with the claim that global inequality is rising.

The Oxfam report cited measures wealth with data for the bottom 50% of the world's population coming from Credit Suisse's Global Wealth databook. The trouble with measuring wealth is that many people who are in debt are not who we'd think of as poor - a British medical student who owns a laptop and a bicycle but has £40,000 student debt is considered to have less wealth than a street child living in the slums of India with 10 rupees in their pocket.

According to Credit Suisse's data, the bottom 10% of global population wealth are of people with net debt ($1.1trillion) - primarily from North America ($371bn) and Europe ($612bn). 19.6% of German, 14.6% of Canadian and 9% of UK adults are in the bottom 50% of the world's wealth rankings.

Meanwhile the number of people living in absolute poverty, global income inequality (between countries), and global consumption inequality are falling. All of these should be celebrated while acknowledging that more needs to be done because the gap is still too large. Income inequality within countries is rising - and needs to be addressed, but misleading claims arising by measuring wealth inequality only questions the legitimacy of those calling for meaningful change.

References:
Oxfam Report:
http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/an-economy-for-the-99-i...

Credit Suisse Report:
http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid...

BBC More or less podcast:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04q68z3#play

Competing interests: No competing interests

11 February 2017
Kush Naker
Junior Doctor, currently studying Tropical Medicine & International Health
LSHTM
London, UK