IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wilwps/halshs-05620341.html

Global Inequality by 2050: The Role of Redistribution and Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Philipp Bothe

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris)

  • Lucas Chancel

    (Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris)

  • Amory Gethin

    (BM = WB - La Banque Mondiale = The World Bank - WBG = GBM - World Bank Group = Groupe Banque Mondiale)

  • Cornelia Mohren

    (Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris)

Abstract

This article investigates how national income convergence, redistribution, and climate change will shape the world distribution of income until 2050, using a novel source of data on global inequality before and after taxes. Despite ongoing convergence in national income, the global bottom 50% post-tax income share only marginally rises from 9.7% to 11.1% under "business-as-usual", while the top 1% share increases by 0.5 percentage points. Yet, if countries were to adopt the most effective redistribution policies implemented by the best performers in their respective country income group, the global bottom 50% income share could increase to 20%. Redistribution of pre-tax incomes accounts for 60% of this increase, with the remainder due to post-tax redistribution. Climate change is set to exacerbate inequalities, potentially offsetting all the increase in the global bottom 50% share since 1980.

Suggested Citation

  • Philipp Bothe & Lucas Chancel & Amory Gethin & Cornelia Mohren, 2026. "Global Inequality by 2050: The Role of Redistribution and Climate Change," World Inequality Lab Working Papers halshs-05620341, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wilwps:halshs-05620341
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-05620341v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-05620341v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wilwps:halshs-05620341. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Caroline Bauer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.