Is Inequality Irrelevant to Development?
This summer, Global Policy and the Springfield Centre will host the inaugural summer school on Global Inequality and Development. This polemic piece highlights the uncomfortable intersection of the two concepts.
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and much of the recent discourse around social entrepreneurship and inclusive business have brought the issue of inequality to the fore. Much debate has taken place about whether inequality causes poverty, impedes progress in poverty reduction, or is simply correlated. To look at the intersection between inequality and development we must first clarify the understanding of each concept.
What is inequality?
Inequality is pluralistic in nature and the early sessions of the course examine this in detail. Crudely, horizontal inequality refers to inequality between groups defined characteristics of ethnicity, religion, gender or other culturally defined factors, while vertical inequality refers to differences between households or individuals which does not derive from these characteristics. Arguments abound that true vertical inequality does not exist as, at the societal level, inequality is always the product of culturally conferred differences in opportunity. However, here I use inequality simplistically, to refer to theoretical meritocratically derived vertical wealth inequality. It is appreciated that there is great value in programmes focused on horizontal inequality and issues of social justice such as democracy and the rule of law. Indeed, beyond development, as the course demonstrates, positive impacts on horizontal inequality can arise from otherwise negative events such as conflict, making it far more problematic as a concept for external intervention.
While some degree of inequality is inevitable, it is undesirable, particularly at the extremes. Inequality considered as marginalisation and exclusion of freedoms leads to civil unrest and undermines democracy. It concentrates power and compromises the ability to provide public goods.
Development is a loaded term. It is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, it can be understood as the social and economic progress of a country, giving more people greater chance of an increased quality of life and improved wellbeing. As a verb, and indeed as a field of study, a policy objective, and even an industry, development can be understood as actions to improve the wellbeing of individuals, invariably by focusing on those disadvantaged by the status quo. As such, for vertical economic inequality, development can be equated with poverty reduction and, indeed, this is where a large amount of development budgets are focused.
Does inequality matter in development?
If inequality is a symptom of poverty then focusing on poverty will reduce it. If inequality slows the rate of poverty reduction, then the role of a development programme is to focus on improving the quality of life of the poorest members of society and not concern itself with how rich the rich are.
Development programmes aim for impact at many levels, from the micro to the macro. Some would argue that multilateral institutions such as the WTO have contributed to the concentration of wealth through internationalising capital. However, even macroeconomic or regional development programmes are in no position to change this. Meso level programmes might aim to develop a sector, while micro-level programmes focus on issues at the household level.
Logically, through the ignorance of inequality, meso and micro level programmes may actually create it if attempting to bring about sustainable change. Raise everyone’s incomes by 20% and the richer capture more of the wealth. A programme may catalyse investment in a sector by local entrepreneurs who stand to increase their own wealth, creating jobs and raising the incomes of the poor in the process. But the incentives dictate that an investor won’t take on the risk of additional investment if they don’t stand to make money from it. The relatively rich will get relatively richer than the poor, who will also become richer but by less.
As argued by Thomas Piketty, the most effective ways to reduce inequality are through higher marginal tax rates and taxes on capital. While they require international coordination in order to be effective, they are matters of national government policy, and not the preserve of development aid. Some of the macro level programmes funded by aid focus on helping the government increase the tax base, either through growth or through technical improvements in collection systems. But how they chose to spend that tax is up to them. Donors may work through governments to build schools, improve infrastructure, or subsidise health care but all of these are one off investments rather than attempts to change social, political and economic structures to deliver more equal outcomes.
The volte-face of this argument is that a focus on inequality is the sine qua non of ‘development’. If there was no inequality there would be no ‘development’. The necessity for international financial institutions such as the Asian Development Bank to state that they need to focus more of their lending on tackling inequality represents the aberration of previous behaviour rather than any notion of progression. For a programme or institution with a developmental remit not to have considered poverty in their decision making processes represents, at best, naivety. In focusing on poverty, there is an implicit consideration of inequality but development’s chief aim needs to be poverty reduction, whether or not this results in a concentration of wealth.
The Summer School
The Global Policy Summer School in association with the Springfield Centre, picks up on the issues examined above. Firstly, it looks at different concepts of inequality, vertical and horizontal, according a range of socially and culturally defined characteristics. Subsequently, it looks in different ways at the causes and manifestations of inequality including health, conflict, access to employment and access to food. Finally, the course looks at development and its responses to inequality and poverty reduction. How effective have they been and why? It looks at these issues through the lens of NGOs and development agencies, in both crises and in longer term development contexts.
If you’d like to find out more about the course or apply to join us in Durham in the summer please click here.
Dr Ben Taylor is the Managing Consultant at The Springfield Centre, a development research, training and implementation organisation in the UK. He is an expert in systemic approaches to development. He has assisted in the development and refinement of new concepts in private sector development included most recently in the Making Markets Work for the Poor approach and systemic change. He has extensive experience in programme and intervention design, monitoring and evaluation, and technical advisory services. He has worked for a wide range of public and private funders including DFID, USAID, SIDA, SDC, the World Bank, humanitarian focused NGOs such as GOAL and Mercy Corps, and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. He currently holds academic positions on the board of several journals, guest lectureships as well as holding an honorary Fellowship at the University of Durham.
