G20 Global Inequality Report

This report is authored by the 2025 G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, commissioned by President Cyril Ramaphosa for South Africa’s Presidency of the G20.

Watch Jayati Ghosh and Winnie Byanyima G20 Presentation

The report summarizes existing evidence and provides new analysis of the state of inequality, revealing:

• 83% of all countries, accounting for 90% of the world’s population, meet the World Bank’s definition of high inequality. Countries with high inequality are seven times more likely to experience democratic decline than more equal countries.
• The richest 1% captured 41% of new wealth since the year 2000, while the bottom 50% of humanity have increased their wealth by just 1%, as data by the World Inequality Lab shows. This means that the richest 1% have seen their average wealth rise by US$1.3m, while the bottom 50% have seen their wealth rise by just US$585 over the same period.
• Inequality between all individuals in the world has fallen in recent decades largely because of income growth in China, but the prospects for further reductions are uncertain, and the overall income gap between the countries of the Global North and the rest of the world remains extremely high.
• New data cited on the significant increase in inherited wealth shows $70 trillion of wealth is expected to be handed down to heirs over the coming ten years, a major challenge to social mobility and fairness.

The Report highlights a menu of options to reduce inequality at the national, and international levels, noting that governments have space to do so. These include exploring:

• Rewriting international economic rules – redesigning intellectual property rules (especially relating to pandemics and climate change) and reforming tax rules to ensure fair taxation of multinationals and the ultra-wealthy (supporting a UN Tax Convention).
• National action – that can include pro-worker regulation (such as boosting wages, as Mexico and Spain have done), reining in corporate concentration, taxing capital gains and investing in universal public goods, like healthcare, and universal social protection.
• New models for trade cooperation and industrial strategies – especially amid heightened geopolitical volatility, exploring new partnership efforts between countries, on the green transition in particular, not narrow protectionism.