Assessing the unequal distribution between social benefits and costs across countries along global supply chains

Social sustainability is largely challenged by unequal exchange within global supply chains (GSCs). Unequal exchange, commonly understood as the net appropriation of value from the Global South to the Global North, arises from power asymmetries in the world economy. As a consequence of the power asymmetries, the distributions of social costs and benefits across countries along GSCs are largely imbalanced. This intensifies regional disparities and obstructs global progress toward social sustainability. However, a comprehensive understanding of the unequal social consequences across multiple dimensions for countries along GSCs is still lacking. This study examines the degrees and patterns of unequal distribution between social benefits and costs along GSCs at the country and sector levels in 2019. To this end, we propose a scale-free GSC Theil index based on the multi-regional input–output framework to measure how far a GSC deviates from an egalitarian state where workers’ benefits align with their social costs. Our results reveal pronounced degrees of unequal distribution between labor compensation and job-quality-related social costs along GSCs. Across sectors, we find labor compensation is more misaligned with social costs associated with vulnerable employment, low-skilled jobs, and gender inequality in high-value GSC sectors. In contrast, in labor-intensive sectors, the unequal distribution is more pronounced for social costs associated with occupational health damage and working hours. Across regions, developing countries, despite suffering from a large global share of social costs, are confined to positions with limited labor compensation, whereas developed regions externalize these costs and capture more social benefits.