Overview
- The Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts formally delivered its report to President Cyril Ramaphosa, placing inequality on the G20 leaders’ agenda for November 22–23 in Johannesburg.
- Central recommendation: establish an International Panel on Inequality, modeled on the IPCC, to provide authoritative monitoring and policy analysis to governments and multilaterals.
- Findings show the top 1% captured 41% of all new wealth since 2000, while the bottom 50% gained just 1%, with 83% of countries meeting the World Bank’s threshold for high inequality.
- The report highlights acute social impacts, including one in four people regularly skipping meals and 2.3 billion experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity since 2019.
- Authors warn that over the next decade more than $70 trillion will be inherited globally, reinforcing intergenerational concentration of wealth and risking further democratic decline.