Since the 1980s, hundreds of millions of people have emerged from absolute poverty (defined today as a spendable income of less than $2.15 a day), thanks in particular to the growth of the two Asian giants, China and India. If in 1990 there were over two billion people who did not have enough to eat, in 2020 (before the pandemic) the number of hungry people in the world had dropped to 700 million. Below a slightly higher threshold ($5.5 a day) we still found 3.4 billion people in 2020. At the same time, inequalities within rich countries have grown. The differences between those at the top of the income ladder (and even more so wealth) and those at the bottom have grown. In Italy, for example, the decile (10 percent) of the population with the highest incomes in 1980 obtained 24 percent of all income produced in a year (before taxation); the “poorest” 50 percent reached 26 percent. In 2020, the share of the richest had risen to 32, that of the “poorest” 50 percent had fallen to 20.7 in the same period. The increase in gaps was even more marked in the leading country of the free world, the United States of America. There, the incomes of the “top 10%” and that of the “bottom 50%” were equivalent in 1980 (about 20 percent of the total). In 2021, the share of the “poorest” decile had fallen below 14 and that of the “richest” decile had risen to 45.6. As inequality increases, the lives of the rich become increasingly physically and socially separated from those of the middle class and the poor. The rich in Latin America or Africa—living in tightly closed and often militarily guarded neighborhoods and compounds—may find themselves on a different planet than the one in which “normal people” live. But even where the neighborhoods of the rich and those of the “others” are separated only by the uncertain boundary of a street or a garden, the worlds of the rich and the other may be alien to each other. The invisible boundaries of inequality, no less than the visible ones, make it more difficult for the rich to be involved in policies to help the poor. Inequality can thicken the screen that allows us not to see poverty and leads us not to care about it without too many pangs of conscience. A theme highlighted by Pope Francis in the apostolic exhortation the joy of the Gospel of 2013: «Almost without realizing it, we become incapable of feeling compassion when faced with the cry of pain of others, we no longer cry when faced with the drama of others nor are we interested in caring for them» (page 51).
by Andrea Boitani
Professor of Political Economy at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
