Human rights scholars are writing about relationships between inequality and human rights in a number of contexts. While some literature focuses on inequality between countries, including the causes and consequences of inequality between developing and developed countries, other literature discusses aspects of inequality within countries. This scholarship covers topics including the impacts of globalization and economic changes on inequality, the impact of inequality on the enjoyment of economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights, and the value of using a human rights approach to address inequality. A number of scholars also discuss social causes and consequences of inequality.

Further, there is a substantial amount of literature on the convergence of poverty and human rights violations. Many authors focus on the ways in which poverty impedes enjoyment of human rights. Of greater interest to the Rapoport Center, however, is literature that distinguishes poverty from inequality and questions whether inequality, as distinct form poverty, matters. In other words, should governments focus on achieving equality, reducing poverty, or both?

This bibliography also includes a number of papers on human development. Authors discuss topics including the development of the concept of human development, human development as a human right, measuring human development, and inequality in human development. Finally, this bibliography includes literature on economic theory spanning from the late 1700s through today.

Background, economic theory, inequality generally

• Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776).
  • First published in 1776, the book offers one of the world’s first collected descriptions of what builds nations’ wealth and is today a fundamental work in classical economics.
• David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817).
  • Concludes that land rent grows as population increases. It also presents the theory of comparative advantage, the theory that free trade between two or more countries can be mutually beneficial, even when one country has an absolute advantage over the other countries in all areas of production.
• Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (1848).
  • Contains Marx and Engels’ theories about the nature of society and politics, that in their own words, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism, and then finally communism.
• Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).
  • An economic treatise and detailed social critique of conspicuous consumption, as a function of social-class consumerism. It proposes that the social strata and the division of labor of the feudal period continued into the modern era. The lords of the manor employed themselves in the economically useless practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, while the middle and lower classes were employed in the industrial occupations that support the whole of society.
• John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920).
  • As part of the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference after WW1 Keynes had detailed knowledge of the debates about reparations which were demanded of Germany. He believed the demands on defeated Germany were too harsh and he resigned his government position and wrote this book explaining his reasons.
• Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942).
  • One of the most famous, debated and important books on social theory, social sciences and economics, in which he deals with capitalism, socialism and creative destruction. First published in 1942, it is largely un-mathematical, compared with neoclassical works, focusing on the unexpected, rapid spurts of entrepreneur-driven growth instead of static models.
• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971).
  • Rawls attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice (i.e. the socially just distribution of goods in a society) by utilizing a variant of the familiar device of the social contract. The resulting theory is known as “Justice as Fairness,” from which Rawls derives his two principles of justice: the “liberty principle” and the “difference principle.”
• Albert Hirschman, Essays in Trespassing (1981).
  • This book brings together fourteen articles and papers written by Albert O. Hirschman. About half deal with the interaction of economic development with politics and ideology, the area in which Hirschman perhaps has made most noted contributions.
• Amartya Sen, On Economic Inequality: Expanded Edition (1997).
• Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire Woods (eds.), Inequality, Globalization, and World Politics (1999).
  • Argues that increasing global inequality has substantial effects on world politics and on the capacity of governments and existing international institutions to manage the problems created by globalization and inequality, looking at eight areas of world politics.
• Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (2012).
  • As those at the top continue to enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they often fail to realize that, as Joseph E. Stiglitz highlights, “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live … It does not have to be this way. In The Price of Inequality Stiglitz lays out a comprehensive agenda to create a more dynamic economy and fairer and more equal society”
• Seven Questions on Inequality, in 13 IMF Research Bulletin 1, 6 (2012).
• Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013).
  • The central thesis of the book is that inequality is not an accident, but rather a feature of capitalism, and can only be reversed through state interventionism. The book thus argues that, unless capitalism is reformed, the very democratic order will be threatened.
• Deirdre McCloskey, Measured, Unmeasured, Mismeasured, and Unjustified Pessimism: A Review Essay of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014).
  • Critique of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century
• James K. Galbraith, What Everyone Needs to Know about Inequality (2014) (NOT FOR CIRCULATION)
  • **This paper is relevant to many of the sub-headings/topics below.
  • Contains chapters on topics including: Inequality: Should we Care?, Inequality in the History of Economic Thought, Categorical Inequality, Major Concepts of Distribution, Measures of Inequality, Causes of Changing Inequality in the United States, Causes of Changing Inequality in the World, Norms and Consequences, Policies Against Inequalities, and a Note on Wealth and Power.
• David Kennedy, Law and the Dynamics of Global Distribution (unpublished manuscript of Sept 29, 2014).
• Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What can be Done? (2015).
  • Recommends new policies to combat global inequality in the areas of technology, employment, social security, the sharing of capital, and taxation.
• François Bourguignon, The Globalization of Inequality (2015).
  • Examines the role of globalization in the evolution of inequality among and within nations, and suggests policies that might moderate inequality’s negative effects.
• Joseph Stiglitz, The Great Divide: Unequal societies and what we can do about them (2015).
  • Examining the dimensions, causes, and consequences of inequality in the United States, Stiglitz draws on lessons from around the world to argue that inequality is a political and moral choice, and the US can change its policies to become a more prosperous, more equal society.

Measuring inequality

• Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality by the Numbers (World Bank, 2012).
  • The paper presents an overview of calculations of global inequality, recently and over the long-run as well as main controversies and political and philosophical implications of the findings. It focuses in particular on the winners and losers of the most recent episode of globalization, from 1988 to 2008. It suggests that the period might have witnessed the first decline in global inequality between world citizens since the Industrial Revolution.
• Branko Milanovic, Global Income Inequality in Numbers: in History and Now, 4 Global Pol’y 198 (2013).
• University of Texas Inequality Project Working Paper 68: UTIP Global Inequality Data Sets 1963-2008:Updates, Revisions and Quality Checks.
  • This paper summarizes a comprehensive revision and update of UTIP’s work on the inequality of pay and incomes around the world, covering the years 1963 to 2008. The new UTIP-UNIDO data set of industrial pay inequality has 4054 country-year observations over for 167 countries, while the updated and revised EHII data set of estimated gross household income inequality has 3871 observations over 149 countries. The paper also provides comparisons of the EHII data set with a wide range of measures and estimates drawn from other work. They show in general that EHII is a reliable reflection of trends, and a reasonable, though not perfect, estimator of the levels of inequality found in surveys. These updates, revisions and quality checks were supported by a grant from the Institute for New Economic Thinking. The paper will be presented at the IEA/World Bank Roundtable on Inequalities, IEA 17th World Congress, 6-10 June 2014, Dead Sea, Jordan. [Full Text]
• New Economics Foundation, Growth isn’t working: The unbalanced distribution of benefits and costs from economic growth (2006).

Inequality among countries

• John T. Passé Smith, Characteristics of the Income Gap Between Countries, in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality 11 (Mitchell A. Seligson & John T. Passé Smith eds., 2008).
  • The purpose of this chapter is to set out the long-term characteristics of the gap between rich and poor countries, examining global inequality between countries in the post-World War II era using the World Bank’s income categories.
• Robert Hunter Wade, The Rising Inequality of World Income Distribution, in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality 31 (Mitchell A. Seligson & John T. Passé Smith eds., 2008).
  • Robert Hunter Wade argues that conflicting conclusions about the gap have arisen in part due to the measures of inequality used, whether and how the measure is weighted, and the method of converting to a common currency. The varying recipes produce eight different measures of income inequality. Wade concludes that seven of the eight measures of inequality clearly show that the gap is worsening and the last suggests the gap is stable.
• See also Robert Hunter Wade, Globalization, Growth, Poverty, Inequality, Resentment, and Imperialism in Global Political Economy (2d ed., John Ravenhill, ed., 2008).
• Robert H. Wade, Income Inequality: Should We Worry About Global Trends?, 23 Eur. J. Dev. Res. 513 (2011).
• Robert Hunter Wade, Should We Worry about Income Inequality?, 36 Int’l J. Health Services 271 (2006). http://joh.sagepub.com/content/36/2/271.short.
  • Liberals (in the European sense) argue that a liberal free-market economic policy regime—nationally and globally—is good for economic growth and poverty reduction and for keeping income inequality within tolerable limits. Second, they argue that substantial income inequality is desirable because of its good effects on other things, notably incentives, innovation, and panache; and conversely, they dismiss concerns about growing inequality as “the politics of envy.” Third, they argue that the core liberal theory of capitalist political economy satisfactorily explains the central tendencies in the role of the state in advanced capitalist economies. This essay challenges all three arguments on both conceptual and empirical grounds. It then suggests why the arguments are nevertheless widely accepted, proposes criteria for deciding how much inequality is fair, and ends by suggesting ways for achieving higher salience for income redistribution (downwards) in political agendas.
• Glenn Firebaugh, Empirics of World Income Inequality, in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality 39 (Mitchell A. Seligson & John T. Passé Smith eds., 2008).
  • Firebaugh disputes the findings of those who argue that the world continues to experience a widening of the gap between rich and poor countries.
• Andre Gunder Frank, The Development of Underdevelopment, in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality 257 (Mitchell A. Seligson & John T. Passé Smith eds., 2008).
  • This chapter is the classic work that initiated what would eventually grow into a tidal wave of “dependency theory” research. In it, the author argues against the classical theory of economics, in which all countries will eventually become developed. He takes a very long-term view, but from his perspective, the cause of underdevelopment is that great colonial powers became wealthy at the expense of the colonies that they exploited and continue to exploit even after the formal colonial period ended.
• Macur Olson Jr., Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations Are Rich, and Others Poor, in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality 317 (Mitchell A. Seligson & John T. Passé Smith eds., 2008).
  • Olson argues that all governments and policies are not made equally and countries do not produce as much as their natural endowments permit, but rather strong institutions that get the policy right are the decisive factor in country’s economic performance. According to Olson, convergence theorists are not right about convergence because most poor countries, despite having a higher propensity to grow than richer countries, have poorer economic policies ad institutions than richer countries.
• International Labor Organization, World of Work Report 2008: Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization.
• Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, Declaration (2015).
  • Recommendations for international taxation reform.
• Ünal Töngür and Adem Yavuz Elveren, Deunionization and pay inequality in OECD countries: a panel Granger causality approach, 38 Economic Modelling 418 (2014).
  • “The neoliberal paradigm in the early 1980s created an extremely negative environment for unions with the abandonment of full-employment policies. Since that time, labor laws across the world have become much less union friendly, and unionizing new establishments has become harder.”
• International Monetary Fund, Annual Report 2014: From Stabilization to Sustainable Growth (2014).
  • Presenting recommendations on the use of State fiscal policy as a primary tool to affect income distribution, including “options for reform of expenditure and tax policies to help achieve distributive objectives efficiently in a manner consistent with fiscal sustainability and recent evidence on how fiscal policy measures can be designed to mitigate the impact of fiscal consolidation on inequality” (37).
• Raphael Kaplinsky, Globalisation and Unequalisation: What can be learned from value chain analysis? 37(2) Journal of Development Studies117 (2000).
  • Although many have gained from globalization, there remains a stubbornly large number of people living in absolute poverty and a rise in inequality within and between countries. This study shows how value chain analysis can be used both to chart the growing disjuncture between global economic activity and global income distribution and to provide causal explanations for this outcome.
• Couze Venn, Neoliberal Political Economy, Biopolitics and Colonialism: A transcolonial genealogy of inequality, 26 Theory, Culture & Soc’y 206 (2009).
• Margot E. Salomon, Of Austerity, Human Rights, and International Institutions, 21 Eur. Int’l L.J. 521 (2015).
  • Austerity measures have led to the denial of social rights and widespread socio-economic malaise across Europe. In the case of countries subjected to conditionality imposed by international institutions, the resultant harms have highlighted a range of responsibility gaps. Two legal developments come together to expose these gaps: Greece’s argument in a series of cases under the European Social Charter that it was not responsible for the impact on rights brought about by austerity measures as it was only giving effect to its other international obligations as agreed with the Troika; and the concern to emerge from the Pringle case before the European Court of Justice that European Union (EU) institutions could do outside of the EU what they could not do within the EU –disregard the Charter of Fundamental Rights. That the Commission and the European Central Bank were in time answerable to international organisations set up to provide financial support adds an additional layer of responsibility to consider. Taking Greece as a case study, this article addresses the imperative of having international institutions respect human rights.
• Silja Eriksen and Indra de Soysa, A Fate Worse than Debt? International Financial Institutions and Human Rights, 1981-2003, 46 J. Peace Res. 485 (2009).
  • Some report that human rights are likely to be violated when poor countries sign up to structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). These violations apparently occur because ordinary people revolt against the neo-liberal policies that SAPs push. This study examines the effect of the actual flow of finances from the World Bank and the IMF, holding constant all other bank-based financial flows, on government respect for human rights. The authors find that pay-in periods are beneficial for human rights, whereas loan dry-ups correlate with violations. Loan dry-ups are likely to occur because of noncompliance with SAPs rather than implementation, since the international financial institutions (IFIs) release loans in tranches to solve the time inconsistency problem. The overall level of indebtedness is robustly related to human rights abuses, but the higher the stock of debt owed to IFIs relative to total debt, the lower the human rights violations. Accumulating debt to IFIs, thus, seems to improve the level of human rights. Additionally, a higher government consumption to GDP ratio reduces human rights, a result that does not suggest that governments that are capable of commanding a higher share of the country’s wealth are less likely to face threatening social dissent. Moreover, a proxy for neo-liberal policies, the index of economic freedom, correlates strongly with better human rights. These results do not square well with the view that neo-liberal policy reforms and the attendant austerity measures drive dangerous dissent.
• Human Rights Watch, Discrimination, Inequality, and Poverty-A Human Rights Perspective (2012)
  • Despite recognition in the Millennium Declaration of the importance of human rights, equality, and non-discrimination for development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) largely bypassed these key principles. The fundamental human rights guarantees of equality and non-discrimination are legally binding obligations and do not need instrumental justifications. That said there is a growing body of evidence that human rights-based approaches, and these key guarantees in particular, can lead to more sustainable and inclusive development results.
• Francesca Klug and Helen Wildbore, Equality, Dignity, and Discrimination under Human Rights Law: Selected Cases (2005), available at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/humanRights/aboutUs/articlesAndTranscripts/Human_rights_equality_and_discrimination.pdf.
• Claire Melamed and Emma Samman, Equity, inequality, and human development in a post-2015 framework, UNDP (2013).
  • Cited by Alston, Report on extreme poverty and human rights, for the proposition: “When dealing with economic inequalities, we should therefore pay specific attention to the overlap between economic inequalities and group-based inequalities (horizontal inequalities), because they can indicate discrimination as an important cause of inequality.”

Inequality within countries

• United Nations Development Programme, Humanity Divided: confronting Inequality in Developing Countries (2013).
• Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld, Unions, norms, and the rise in American wage inequality, 76 Am. Sociological Rev. 532 (2011).
• Fabio Veras Soares et al., Cash transfer programmes in Brazil: Impacts on inequality and poverty, Int’l Poverty Ctr., Working Paper No. 21 (UNDP, 2006).
• Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol and Shelbi D. Day, Property, Wealth, Inequality, and Human Rights: A Formula for Reform, 34 Ind. L. Rev. 1213 (2001).
  • This work proposes a Human rights paradigm that provides a methodology to analyze, deconstruct and unravel the existing systematic inequalities in Black/white wealth. First, we examine the historical relationship between Blacks and whites in the United States In the context of property, wealth, and economics. Then, In Part II, we reveal the disturbing reality that not much has changed. Next, we make a two-part suggestion of how to ameliorate, or at least begin to remedy, current economic inequalities by proposing the application of a human rights paradigm of economic discrimination as violence. Finally, we analyze the role of republican liberalism in Black/white Economic inequality and reveal how, despite its equality-based dialect, it has translated into a model that has enabled inequality.
• Tommie Shelby, Integration, Inequality, and Imperatives of Justice: A Review Essay, 42 Phil. and Pub. Aff. 253 (2014).

 

Inequality and human rights

• Radhika Balakrishnan et al., What does Inequality Have to Do with Human Rights?, PERI Working Paper Series No. 392 (August 2015), http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_351-400/WP392.pdf.
  • What is the relationship between human rights and inequalities in income and wealth? Different approaches to understanding inequality have distinct implications for how we think about issues of well-being and social justice. The human rights framework offers an approach that stands in marked contrast to neoclassical economic theory. The human rights approach has started to engage more thoroughly with the question of inequalities in income and wealth, but offers only partial guidance on the implications of increasingly polarized societies. This paper looks at how income and wealth inequality affects realized outcomes with regard to the enjoyment of specific rights and how the distribution of resources affects political dynamics and power relations within which specific rights are realized.
• The Relationship Between the Enjoyment of Human Rights, in particular Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Income Distribution, Comm’n on Human Rights, Sub- Comm’n on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 50th Sess., U.N. Doc. E/CN4/Sub 2/1977/9.
• Paul Braverman & Sofia Gruskin, Poverty, equity, human rights and health (World Health Organization 2003)
  • Those concerned with poverty and health have sometimes viewed equity and human rights as abstract concepts with little practical application, and links between health, equity and human rights have not been examined systematically. Examination of the concepts of poverty, equity, and human rights in relation to health and to each other demonstrates that they are closely linked conceptually and operationally and that each provides valuable, unique guidance for health institutions’ work. Equity and human rights perspectives can contribute concretely to health institutions’ efforts to tackle poverty and health, and focusing on poverty is essential to operationalizing those commitments. Both equity and human rights principles dictate the necessity to strive for equal opportunity for health for groups of people who have suffered marginalization or discrimination.
• Alice Donald & Elizabeth Mottershaw, Poverty, inequality, and human rights: Do human rights make a difference? (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2009)
  • How other countries have used human rights to tackle poverty and how this could be applied in the UK:People working to tackle poverty in the UK are increasingly interested in using human rights in their work. This study looks at how this has been done in other countries, its impact on affected communities, debate, policy and government programmes, and its relevance for the UK
• Evelyn Kallen, Social Inequality and Social Injustice: A Human Rights Perspective (2004)
  • This book uses a human rights framework to analyze how group-level social inequalities and injustices are socially constructed and maintained through violations of human rights on grounds of race, gender, sexuality, etc., and how human rights legislation can help such violations to effectively be redressed. Although it focuses primarily on democratic nations, it uses international case material to highlight key global issues.
• Todd Landman & Marco Larizza, Inequality and Human Rights: Who Controls What, When, and How, 53 Int’l Studies Quarterly 715 (2009)
  • This article tests the empirical relationship between inequality and the protection of personal integrity rights using a cross-national time-series data set for 162 countries for the years 1980–2004. The data comprise measures of land inequality, income inequality, and a combined factor score for personal integrity rights protection, while the analysis controls for additional sets of explanatory variables related to development, political regimes, ethnic composition, and domestic conflict. The analysis shows robust support for the empirical relationship between income inequality and personal integrity rights abuse across the whole sample of countries as well as for distinct subsets, including non-communist countries and non-OECD countries
• Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Reducing Inequality – The Missing MDG: A Content Review of PRSPs and Bilateral Donor Policy Statements, 41 IDS Bulletin 26 (2010).
  • Although important gains have been made in reducing global poverty, the pace of progress across the world is not on track to achieve the 2015 MDG targets. Is this due to lack of ownership on the part of national governments and the international community? This article examines whether the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and donor policy statements are aligned with MDG priorities and targets. The analysis found a high degree of commitment to MDGs as a whole but both PRSPs and donor statements are selective, consistently emphasising income poverty and social investments for education, health and water but not other targets concerned with empowerment and inclusion of the most vulnerable such as gender violence or women’s political representation. The article concludes that a new, ninth Goal needs to be added – to reduce inequality to make the MDGs aligned to the original purpose of the Millennium Declaration.
• Naila Kabeer, Social Justice and the Millennium Development Goals: the Challenge of Intersecting Inequalities, 13 Equal Rts. Rev. 91 (2014).
• Margot E. Solomon, Poverty, Privilege, and International Law: The Millennium Development Goals and the Guise of Humanitarianism, 51 German Y.B. Int’l L. 39 (2008) available at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/humanRights/aboutUs/articlesAndTranscripts/SalomonGYIL08.pdf.
• Luke Martell, Global Inequality, Human Rights and Power: A critique of Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitanism, 35 Critical Soc. 253 (2009).
• OXFAM, The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all (January 18, 2013).
• OXFAM, Wealth: Having it all and wanting more (January 2015).
• Thomas Pogge, Growth and Inequality: Understanding recent trends and political choices, 55 Dissent 66 (2008).
• OpenDemocracy debate:
  • Philip Alston, Extreme inequality as the antithesis of human rights (27 October 2015), https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/philip-alston/extreme-inequality-as-antithesis-of-human-rights.
  • Samuel Moyn, Human rights and the age of inequality (27 October 2015), https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/samuel-moyn/human-rights-and-age-of-inequality.
  • Radhika Balakrishnan and James Heintz, How inequality threatens all human rights (29 October 2015), https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/radhika-balakrishnan-james-heintz/how-inequality-threatens-all-human-rights.
  • Doutje Lettinga and Lars van Troost, Justice over rights? (6 October 2015), https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/doutje-lettinga-lars-van-troost/justice-over-rights.

Inequality as a human rights violation

• Amnesty International Netherlands, Can Human Rights Bring Social Justice? Twelve essays (Doutje Lettinga and Lars van Troost eds., 2015), available at: https://www.amnesty.nl/sites/default/files/public/can_human_rights_bring_social_justice.pdf.
  • Table of Contents: Human rights and the age of inequality – Samuel Moyn; How human rights can address socioeconomic inequality – Dan Chong; Seeking socioeconomic justice – Widney Brown; Dear fellow jurists, human rights are about politics, and that’s perfectly fine – Koldo Casla; Back to the future: human rights protection beyond the rights approach – Eduardo Salvador Arenas Catalán; Human rights and social justice: separate causes – Aryeh Neier; Against a human rights-based approach to social justice – Jacob Mchangama; Will human rights help us get social justice? – Sara Burke; How are social justice and human rights related? Four traps to avoid – Rolf Künnemann; Justice over rights? – Doutje Lettinga and Lars van Troost; Advancing social justice through human rights: the experience of Amnesty International – Ashfaq Khalfan and Iain Byrne; Human rights and social justice – a false dichotomy? – David Petrasek.
• Kaushik Basu, The State of Global Poverty, January 23, 2015, available at: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/global-inequality-persistence-of-poverty-by-kaushik-basu-2015-01.
  • The World Bank’s chief economist calls for the consideration of “policies and interventions to curb such extreme inequality,” which he characterizes as “a collective failure.”
• UNDP, Humanity Divided: Confronting Inequality in Developing Countries (2013)
  • “…inequality contradicts the most fundamental principles of social justice, starting from the notion, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”.
• Andrew Brown, Pope Francis condemns inequality, thus refusing to play the game, The Guardian (April 28, 2014).
• Margot E. Salomon, Why should it matter that others have more? Poverty, inequality, and the potential of international human rights law, 37 Rev. Int’l Stud. 2137 (2011).
  • A concern with ensuring minimum standards of dignity for all and a doctrine based on the need to secure for everyone basic levels of rights have traditionally shaped the way in which international human rights law addresses poverty. Whether this minimalist, non-relational approach befits international law objectives in the area of world poverty begs consideration. This article offers three justifications as to why global material inequality – and not just poverty – should matter to international human rights law. The article then situates requirements regarding the improvement of living conditions, a system of equitable distribution in the case of hunger, and in particular obligations of international cooperation, within the post-1945 international effort at people-centred development. The contextual consideration of relevant tenets serves to demonstrate that positive international human rights law can be applied beyond efforts at poverty alleviation to accommodate a doctrine of fair global distribution.
• Phillip Alston, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, A/HRC/29/31 (May 27, 2015).

Inequality and political and social development

• Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson, The Political Economy of the Kuznets Curve, 6 Rev. of Dev. Econ. 183 (2002)
  • Provides a political economy theory of the Kuznets Curve. When development leads to increasing inequality, this can induce political instability and force democratization on political elites. Democratization leads to institutional changes, which encourage distribution and reduce inequality. Nevertheless, development does not necessarily induce a Kuznets curve, and it is shown that development may be associated with two types of nondemocratic paths: an “autocratic disaster,” with high inequality and low output, and an “East Asian Miracle,” with low inequality and high output. These arise either because inequality does not increase with development or because the degree of political mobilization is low.
• Milford Bateman and Ha-Joon Change, Microfinance and the Illusion of Development, 1 World Econ. Rev. 13 (2012)
  • We argue that while the microfinance model may well generate some narrow positive short run outcomes for a few lucky individuals, these positive outcomes are very limited in number and anyway swamped by much wider longer run downsides and opportunity costs at the community and national level. Our view is that microfinance actually constitutes a powerful institutional and political barrier to sustainable economic and social development, and so also to poverty reduction. Finally, we suggest that continued support for microfinance in international development policy circles cannot be divorced from its supreme serviceability to the neoliberal/globalisation agenda.
• Gary Dymski, Poverty and Social Discrimination: A Spatial Keynesian Approach (2004)
  • This essay develops a spatial Keynesian approach to the problems of poverty and social discrimination. This approach shows that the spatial distribution of households and businesses is a key factor in shaping the character and extent of poverty in any society.
• University of Texas Income Inequality Project Working Paper 51: Inequality and Economic and Political Change
  • This paper was prepared for the United Nations Research Institute on Social Development. It describes the broad evolution of inequality in the world economy over the past four decades, and summarizes the relationship between inequality, economic development, political regimes and the functional distribution of income. The evidence on inequality comes from a series of data sets built by the University of Texas Inequality Project, freshly updated through 2003, showing a decline in global inequality after 2000. Data on the related factors is developed in background papers by Hyunsub Kum, Sara Hsu and Olivier Giovannoni, to be published shortly in the UTIP working paper series
• Giovanni Andrea Cornia (ed.), Falling Inequality in Latin America: Policy Changes and Lessons (2014).
• Stephen Gill, Constitutionalizing Inequality and the Clash of Globalizations, 4 Int’l Studies Rev. 47 (2002).
  • Intensified inequalities, social dislocations and human insecurity have coincided with a redefinition of the political in the emerging world order. Part of this redefinition involves the emergence of new constitutionalism. New constitutionalism limits democratic control over central elements of economic policy and regulation by locking in future governments to liberal frameworks of accumulation premised on freedom of enterprise. New political “limits of the possible” are also redefined by a “clash of globalizations” as new constitutionalism and more generally “globalization from above” is contested from below by nationalists, populists and fundamentalists as well as diverse progressive movements in innovative forms of global political agency.

Inequality and social outcomes

• Douglas Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System (2008)
• Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (1999)
  • Charles Tilly, in this eloquent manifesto, presents a powerful new approach to the study of persistent social inequality. How, he asks, do long-lasting, systematic inequalities in life chances arise, and how do they come to distinguish members of different socially defined categories of persons?
• Peter Saunders, Beware False Prophets (2010)
  • This report shows that The Spirit Level has little claim to validity. Its evidence is weak, the analysis is superficial and the theory is unsupported. The book’s growing influence threatens to contaminate an important area of political debate with wonky statistics and spurious correlations. The case for radical income redistribution is no more compelling now than it was before this book was published
• Rickard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (2010)
  • It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Further, more unequal societies are bad for everyone within them-the rich and middle class as well as the poor. The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level exposes stark differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem-poor health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness-is more likely to occur in a less-equal society. Renowned researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett lay bare the contradictions between material success and social failure in the developed world. But they do not merely tell us what’s wrong. They offer a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society.
• Miles Corak, Income Inequality, equality of opportunity, and intergenerational mobility, Institute for the Study of Labor Discussion Paper No. 7250 (2013).
• See also United Nations, Trade and Development Report 2012 (Sales No. E.12.II.D.6).
  • P. 32: “The gap between formal and real equality of opportunities has deep economic roots and far-reaching economic consequences. Inequality that begins in the cradle is not easily redressed through social mobility.”
• United Nations, Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics (Sales No. E.10.III.Y.1).

Intentional inequality (discrimination) as a human rights violation

• Human Rights Watch, Discrimination, Inequality, and Poverty-A Human Rights Perspective (2012)
  • Despite recognition in the Millennium Declaration of the importance of human rights, equality, and non-discrimination for development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) largely bypassed these key principles. The fundamental human rights guarantees of equality and non-discrimination are legally binding obligations and do not need instrumental justifications. That said there is a growing body of evidence that human rights-based approaches, and these key guarantees in particular, can lead to more sustainable and inclusive development results.[i]
• Francesca Klug and Helen Wildbore, Equality, Dignity, and Discrimination under Human Rights Law: Selected Cases (2005), available at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/humanRights/aboutUs/articlesAndTranscripts/Human_rights_equality_and_discrimination.pdf.
• Claire Melamed and Emma Samman, Equity, inequality, and human development in a post-2015 framework, UNDP (2013).
  • Cited by Alston, Report on extreme poverty and human rights, for the proposition: “When dealing with economic inequalities, we should therefore pay specific attention to the overlap between economic inequalities and group-based inequalities (horizontal inequalities), because they can indicate discrimination as an important cause of inequality.”

Inequality and economic development

• Stephen Hymer, The Multinational Corporation and the Law of Uneven Development (1972)
• Robert Patrick Korzeniewics & Timothy Patrick Moran, Theorizing the Relationship Between Inequality and Growth, 34 Theory and Society 277 (2005)
  • This article explores a promising theoretical approach for reassessing the relationship between inequality and economic growth. The article draws some insights from the influential inverted U-curve hypothesis originally advanced by Simon Kuznets, but drastically recasts the original arguments by shifting two fundamental premises. First, retaining Kuznets’s emphasis on the importance of economic growth in generating demographic transitions between existing and new distributional arrays, we argue that a “constant drive toward inequality” results after replacing a Schumpeterian notion of “creative destruction” for the dualistic assumptions in Kuznets’s model. Second, while Kuznets devoted considerable attention to the impact of institutions on distributional outcomes, we argue that institutions should be understood as relational and global mechanisms of regulation, operating within countries while simultaneously shaping interactions and flows between nations. The article argues that economic growth, unfolding through institutions embedded in time and space, produces a constant drive towards inequality that results in a multiple and overlapping matrix of distributional arrays, an overall income distribution (e.g., within and between countries) that is both systemic and historical.
• Simon Kuznets, Economic Growth and Income Inequality, 45 The American Econ. Rev. (1955)
  • The central theme of this paper is the character and causes of long term changes in the personal distribution of income. Does inequality in the distribution of income increase or decrease in the course of a country’s economic growth? What factors determine the secular level and trends of income inequalities?
• A.B. Atkinson & Salvatore Morelli, Economic crises and Inequality (UNDP, 2011)
  • Sustainability for a society means long-term viability, but also the ability to cope with economic crises and disasters. Just as with natural disasters, we can minimize the chance of them occurring and set in place policies to protect the world’s citizens against their consequences. This paper is concerned with the impact of economic crises on the inequality of resources and with the impact of inequality on the probability of economic crises.
• Federico Cingano, Trends in income inequality and its impact on economic growth, OECD Social, Employment, and Migration Working Papers No. 163 (2014).
• Jonathan D. Ostry et al., Redistribution, inequality, and growth, IMF Staff Discussion Note (2014).
  • “On average, across countries and over time, the things that governments have typically done to redistribute do not seem to have led to bad growth outcomes, unless they were extreme. . . the resulting narrowing of inequality helped support faster and more durable growth, apart from ethical, political, or broader social considerations” (26).
• Florence Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron, Inequality and Labor Market Institutions, IMF Staff Discussion Note (2015).

Inequality and globalization

• Branko Milanovic, Globalization and Inequality, in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality 377 (Mitchell A. Seligson & John T. Passé Smith eds., 2008).
  • In this chapter, World Bank expert Branko Milanovic explores three different measures of inequality: unweighted international inequality, international inequality weighted by population, and global inequality based on individuals’ household income. Using the three different measures of global inequality, he begins the process of untangling the conflicting conclusions and prescriptions with regard to findings concerning the gap between rich and poor countries. UNDP International Poverty Center, The Challenge of Inequality (Dag Ehrenpreis, ed., 2007).
• World Bank Policy Research Report: The New Wave of Globalization and its Economic Effects, in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality 391 (Mitchell A. Seligson & John T. Passé Smith eds., 2008).
  • Report team describes three eras of globalization and their economic impact. They examine each era and try to determine what motivated globalization and which countries benefited and which did not.
• Mark Herkenrath & Volker Bornschier, Transnational Corporations in World Development: Still the Same harmful Effects in an Increasingly Globalized World Economy?, 11 J. of World Systems Research 104 (2003).
  • The authors examine the role of transnational corporations in the process of globalization and seek to determine if TNCs’ potentially harmful impact on developing countries’ levels of inequality and rates of economic growth has changed.
• ILO, A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All; Report of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization (Geneva International Labour Organization, 2004).
  • “We believe the dominant perspective on globalization must shift more from a narrow preoccupation with markets to a broader preoccupation with people. Globalization must be brought from the high pedestal of corporate board rooms and cabinet meetings to meet the needs of people in the communities in which they live. The social dimension of globalization is about jobs, health and education – but it goes far beyond these. It is the dimension of globalization which people experience in their daily life and work: the totality of their aspirations for democratic participation and material prosperity. A better globalization is the key to a better and secure life for people everywhere in the 21st century”
• Richard Jolly, Global Inequalities in The Elgar Companion to Development Studies (David Alexander Clark, ed., 2006).

 

Inequality v. poverty – Should we care about inequality?

• Edgar K. Browning, Inequality and Poverty, 55 Southern Econ. J. 819 (1989). http://www.jstor.org/stable/1059464?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.
  • “…I intend to argue that we may have gone too far in attempting to promote economic equality through government policies. In taking this position, I run the risk of being labeled hard hearted, and perhaps soft-headed as well. An important part of my argument, however, is based on distinguishing between economic inequality with in the large non-poor part of the population and the poverty that afflicts a small portion of our population. I favor a role for government in helping the truly needy, but I will attempt to show that extending that role to permit redistribution among the general population is often counter productive.”
• Walter Korpi & Joakim Palme, The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality: Welfare State Institutions, Inequality, and Poverty in the Western Countries, 63 Am. Soc. Rev. 661 (1998). http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657333?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.
  • Debates on how to reduce poverty and inequality have focused on two controversial questions: Should social policies be targeted to low-income groups or be universal? Should benefits be equal for all or earnings-related? Traditional arguments in favor of targeting and flat-rate benefits, focusing on the distribution of the money actually transferred, neglect three policy-relevant considerations: (1) The size of redistributive budgets is not fixed but reflects the structure of welfare state institutions. (2) A trade-off exists between the degree of low-income targeting and the size of redistributive budgets. (3) Outcomes of market-based distribution are often more unequal than those of earnings-related social insurance programs. We argue that social insurance institutions are of central importance for redistributive outcomes. Using new data, our comparative analyses of the effects of different institutional types of welfare states on poverty and inequality indicate that institutional differences lead to unexpected outcomes and generate the paradox of redistribution: The more we target benefits at the poor and the more concerned we are with creating equality via equal public transfers to all, the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality.
• Machiko Nissanke & Erik Thorbecke, Channels and Policy Debate in the Globalization-Inequality-Poverty Nexus, Discussion Paper No. 2005/08 (June 2005). http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/discussion-papers/2005/en_GB/dp2005-08/.
  • The paper offers a critical literature review of the debate surrounding the globalization poverty nexus, focusing on channels and linkages through which globalization affects the poor. After introducing four different concepts used to measure trends in world income inequality, it examines first the ‘growth’ conduit through which globalization affects poverty. Treating inequality as the explicit filter between growth and poverty reduction, the causal chain of openness-growth-inequality-poverty is scrutinized, link by link. The paper then moves on to examine other channels in the globalization-poverty nexus that operate through changes in relative factor and good prices, factor movements, the nature of technological change and diffusion, the impact of globalization on volatility and vulnerability, the worldwide flow of information, global disinflation, and institutions, respectively. The paper concludes with a discussion of strategic policy issues within the context of the globalization debate.
• Peter Townsend, Poverty, Social Exclusion and Social Polarisation: The Need to Construct an International Welfare State, in World Poverty: New Policies to Defeat an Old Enemy (Peter Townsend & David Gordon eds., 2002).
  • This chapter presents a general account of trends in development from the 1960s, when poverty was placed at the forefront of international concern. The continued emphasis on economic growth by the Bretton Woods institutions has attracted increasingly critical attention. The partial shift of attention to ‘social exclusion’ has widened the understanding of the causes of poverty but has not led to the mobilisation of effective action on the part of the international agencies or the most powerful states. It is the phenomenon of ‘social polarisation’ that is attracting too little interest, and yet is fuelling increasingly difficult and even dangerous, as well as contentious, social conditions.
• Álvaro de Vita, Inequality and Poverty in Global Perspective, in Freedom From Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? 103 (Thomas Pogge ed., 2007).
  • Distinguishes justice from international humanitarian aid, discusses the “proper focus of our moral concern” as far as international socioeconomic disparities are concerned, questioning whether inequality matters, and examines three normative grounds for international distributive justice.
• The World Bank, Analyzing the World Bank’s goal of achieving “shared prosperity,” 2 Inequality in Focus(October 2013).
• See also Ambar Narayan et al., Shared Prosperity: Links to Growth, Inequality and Inequality of Opportunity, World Bank Pol’y Res. Working Paper No. 6649 (October 2013).
• IMF Fiscal Affairs Department, Should Equity Be a Goal of Economic Policy? , in Development and Under-development: The Political Economy of Global Inequality 149 (Mitchell A. Seligson & John T Passé-Smith eds., 2008).
  • International Monetary Fund staff working in the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department pose the question, should governments be concerned with issues of equity? After concluding that widespread economic expansion has not been met with declining inequalities, the authors attempt to determine the impact of globalization on the distribution of income. They conclude by suggesting that one of the more promising strategies for economic growth with equity involves investing in human capital.
• Sandra Fredman, Human Rights Transformed: Positive Rights and Positive Duties (2008).
  • Cited by Salomon on the relationship between human rights minimum standards and the achievement of substantive equality. (Salomon pp. 1240-41, Fredman pp. 176-80 and 226).
  • Part I elaborates the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity underpinning a positive approach to human rights duties, and argues that the dichotomy between democracy and human rights is misplaced. Instead, positive human rights duties should strengthen rather than substitute for democracy, particularly in the face of globalization and privatization. Part II considers justiciability, fashioning a democratic role for the courts based on their potential to stimulate deliberative democracy in the wider environment. Part III applies this framework to key positive duties, particularly substantive equality and positive duties to provide, traditionally associated with the Welfare State or socioeconomic rights.
• Charles R. Beitz, The idea of Human Rights (2009).
  • Beitz presents a model of human rights as matters of international concern whose violation by governments can justify international protective and restorative action ranging from intervention to assistance. He proposes a schema for justifying human rights and applies it to several controversial cases–rights against poverty, rights to democracy, and the human rights of women.
  • Cited by Salomon for the proposition that the “threshold” model of rights achievement is compatible with a range of distributive justice conceptions (at the domestic level), so long as they result in the threshold being met (Salomon p. 2144; Beitz pp. 161-162).
• Charles R. Beitz, Does Global Inequality Matter? In Global Justice (Thomas Pogge ed., 2001).
• The road to dignity by 2030: ending poverty, transforming all lives, and protecting the planet, Report of the Secretary-General (A/69/700). http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/reports/SG_Synthesis_Report_Road_to_Dignity_by_2030.pdf.
  • Para. 68: “Income inequality specifically is one of the most visible aspects of a broader and more complex issue, one that entails inequality of opportunity. This is a universal challenge that the whole world must address.”
• Alice Donald & Elizabeth Mottershaw, Poverty, Inequality, and Human Rights: Do Human Rights Make a Difference? (September 2009)
  • Examines the use of human rights in anti-poverty and social justice work in other countries to develop guidelines for the use of human rights in anti-poverty efforts in the UK.

Poverty and human rights (Poverty as a human rights violation)

• Stéphane Chauvier, The Right to Basic Resources in Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right (Thomas Pogge ed., 2008).
• Matthew Craven, The Violence of Dispossession: Extraterritoriality and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Action (Mashood A Baderin and Robert McCorquodale eds., 2007).OHCHR, Human Rights and Poverty Reduction (2004).
  • Expounds a human rights approach to poverty reduction.
• Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (2d ed., 2008).
  • Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five. However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it.
• Thomas Pogge, Severe Poverty as a Violation of Negative Duties: A Reply to the Critics, 19 Ethics and Int’l Affairs 55 (2005). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-7093.2005.tb00490.x/abstract.
• Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? (Thomas Pogge ed., 2008). http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001518/151826e.pdf.
  • Collection of essays by leading academics about severe poverty. The essays seek to explain why freedom from poverty is a human right and what duties the right creates in the affluent.
  • Salomon cites in particular Marc Fleurbaey’s essay, Poverty as a Form of Oppression, p. 133.
• Thomas Pogge, Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation (UNESCO Poverty Project, 2004). http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/files/4363/10980840881Pogge_29_August.pdf/Pogge+29+August.pdf.
• Implementation of Existing Human Rights Norms and Standards in the Context of the Fight Against Extreme Poverty, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub 2/2003/17, 55th Sess. (2003). http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G03/146/47/PDF/G0314647.pdf?OpenElement.
  • The present report was prepared pursuant to resolution 2002/13 of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, which requested an ad hoc group of experts coordinated by José Bengoa to submit a working paper on the need to develop guiding principles on the implementation of existing human rights norms and standards in the context of the fight against extreme poverty.
• Susan Marks, Human Rights and the Bottom Billion, European Human Rights Law Review 1 (2007).
  • Cited by Salomon for the proposition that the failure to secure the socioeconomic rights of so many people is largely a consequence of a global system that structurally disadvantages half the world population – “poverty is not just a condition, but a relationship.”
• Margot Salomon, International Human Rights Obligations in Context: Structural Obstacles and the Demands of Global Justice in Development as a Human Right: Legal, Political, and Economic Dimensions(2d ed., Bård Anders Andreassen and Stephen P. Marks eds., 2010).

Human development; Inequality in human development

• Sabina Alkire, Human Development: Definitions, Critiques, and Related Concepts (UNDP, 2010). http://www.ophi.org.uk/human-development-definitions-critiques-and-related-concepts/.
  • The purpose of this background paper is: i) to synthesize the discussions regarding the concept of human development, so as to inform the 2010 Report’s definition, and ii) drawing on the extensive policy and academic literatures, to propose relationships between the concept of human development and four related concepts: the Millennium Development Goals, Human Rights, Human Security, and Happiness. Inequality, the duration of outcomes across time, and environmental sustainability are also prominent due to their fundamental importance.
• Phillip Alston, A Human Rights Perspective on the Millennium Development Goals, available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/development/docs/millennium.doc.
• Michael Binder & Georgios Georgiadis, Determinants of Human Development: Insights from State-Dependent Panel Models (UNDP 2010). http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/determinants-human-development.
  • In this paper, we study economic development in a panel of 84 countries from 1970 to 2005. We focus on characterizing heterogeneities in the development effects of macroeconomic policies and on comparing the development process as measured by GDP to that measured by the Human Development Index (HDI).
• Caroline Dooter & Stephan Klasen, The Multidimensional Poverty Index: Achievements, Conceptual and Empirical Issues (UNDP, 2014). http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/mpi_dotter_and_klasen.pdf.
  • The MPI has been an interesting and important effort to provide a household-level multidimensional poverty measure that can compete in depth and coverage with the widely used (and problematic) $1.25 a day income poverty indicator. We strongly suggest that Human Development Report Office (HDRO) continues to use an MPI-type indicator in its future Human Development Reports. At the same time, there are many open questions and issues regarding the conceptual underpinning and alternative formulations of the MPI. We suggest that these issues are carefully considered and possibly a revised MPI be produced that reflects different choices.
• Des Gasper & Oscar A. Gómez, Evolution of Thinking and Research on Human and Personal Security 1994-2013 (UNDP, 2013). http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/gomez_hdr14.pdf.
  • Human security analysis considers the intersection of deprivation and vulnerability, and is an essential part, or partner, of human development thinking, giving special attention to risks and forces of disruption and destruction. This paper highlights six strands or styles in such work since 1994: violent conflict, and its prevention and resolution; crime and ‘citizen security’; psychological insecurity; environmental change; comprehensive identification and comparison of all major threats; and study of selected priority threats in a particular time and place.
• Human Development Report 2014: Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience. http://hdr.undp.org/en/2014-report.
  • The 2014 Human Development Report is the latest in the series of global Human Development Reports published by UNDP since 1990 as independent, empirically grounded analyses of major development issues, trends and policies.
• Human Development Report 2005: International cooperation at a crossroads: Aid, trade, and security in an unequal world.
  • Includes a chapter on inequality and human development, including why inequality matters and inequality within countries.
• Selim Jahan, Evolution of the Human Development Index, in Handbook of Human Development (Oxford University Press) (2002)
• Inge Kaul, Fostering Sustainable Human Development: Managing the Macro-risks of Vulnerability (UNDP, 2014). http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/fostering-sustainable-human-development.
  • The purpose of this paper is to trace and characterize the factors that contribute to today’s multiplying signs and incidences of vulnerability, and, based on this analysis, to suggest possible corrective policy steps. The findings show that the risks of vulnerability emerging during recent decades tend to be of a systemic or macro nature. Their root cause appears to lie in the persisting gap between the transnational reach that marks more and more policy issues, and the still essentially national focus of public policy-making. The policy recommendations flowing from this analysis include: introducing global issues management into governance systems, nationally and internationally; promoting a notion of mutually respectful and ‘smart’ sovereignty; and establishing, within the United Nations, a Global Stewardship Council, i.e., a standing high-level body of independent eminent personalities mandated to advise intergovernmental bodies on policy options aimed at fostering global equity and longer term sustainability.
• Stephen Marks, The Human Right to Development: Between Rhetoric and Reality, 17 Harvard Human Rights J. 139 (2004). https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/580/2012/10/spm_the_human_right_development.pdf.
  • The right to development (RTD) has been part of the international debate on human rights for over thirty years but has not yet entered the practical realm of development planning and implementation. States tend to express rhetorical support for this right but neglect its basic precepts in development practice. Paradoxically, the United States opposes or is reluctant to recognize development as an international human right, and yet the current administration has proposed to nearly double its development spending under a program that is strikingly similar to the international RTD model. The purpose of this Article is to explore this paradox and through it reflect on the obstacles to the realization of the RTD and its compatibility with U.S. foreign policy.
• Claire Melamed & Emma Samman, Equity, Inequality and Human Development in a Post-2015 (UNDP, 2013). http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/equity-inequality-and-human-development-post-2015-framework.
  • The structure of the paper is as follows. First, the paper situates equity and inequality within the capability approach, and justifies the focus on promoting greater equality in multiple dimensions—citing its intrinsic value and instrumental consequences. The paper then reviews the evidence on levels and trends of inequality among countries, among people and among generations. Next, it considers sources of inequality, and finally, it discusses possible options for reducing inequality within a post-2015 framework.
• Eric Neumayer, Sustainability and Inequality in Human Development (UNDP, 2004). http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdrp_2011_04.pdf.
  • This paper analyzes the theoretical and empirical links between inequality in human development on the one hand and sustainability on the other. It specifically looks at causality in both directions. Inequality in various dimensions of human development is analyzed with respect to both weak and strong sustainability, where weak sustainability presumes substitutability among different forms of capital, while strong sustainability reject substitutability and calls for preservation of so-called critical forms of natural capital independent of the amount of investment into other forms of capital.
• Amartya Sen, The ends and means of development, in Development as Freedom (1999).
• Amartya Sen, Freedoms and Needs, 10 The New Republic 17 (January 1994).
• France Stewart, Capabilities and Human Development: Beyond the individual – the critical role of social institutions and social competencies (Human Development Report Office Occasional Paper, 2013). http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdro_1303_stewart.pdf.
  • Social interactions are a quintessential part of human life, and their quantity and quality determine a person’s social or relational capabilities (capabilities involving relations with others). In addition, social institutions and social competencies play a critical role in advancing capabilities and shaping individual choice. Social institutions (norms and organizations) operate collectively (defined here to exclude the government and the private sector). Social competencies are what social institutions can do or be. As well as an important instrumental role in creating and enhancing particular capabilities, social institutions help shape individual preferences and behaviour so that individuals cannot be assumed to be fully autonomous. Finally, relations among people and institutions determine whether a society is peaceful, cohesive and inclusive. This paper analyses some policy implications arising from this analysis—aimed at promoting well-functioning social institutions likely to advance human development.
• Jon Hall, Issues for a Global Human Development Agenda (UNDP, 2013). http://hdr.undp.org/en/global-agenda.
  • Discusses changes since 2000 including demographic shifts, economic volatility and macroeconomic management, human development changes, planetary boundaries, thresholds, and tipping points, fighting poverty in richer countries, employment and employment security, and equity and inequality, human development and the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and addressing core challenges including maintaining the planet’s life support systems, achieving decent employment for all, moving towards a less unfair world, achieving equity and inequality within countries and among countries, and reducing poverty.

• Margot E. Salomon, Global Responsibility for Human Rights: World Poverty and the Development of International Law (2007).
• Peter Uvin, Human Rights and Development (2004).
  • Peter Uvin links human rights with development theory and practice to show how practitioners can surmount tough obstacles to successfully effect strategies for reducing conflict and improving human rights outcomes.
• Jack Donnelly, Human Rights, Democracy, and Development, 21 Human Rights Quarterly 608 (1999). https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/human_rights_quarterly/v021/21.3donnelly.html.
  • In the past decade, development, democracy, and human rights have become hegemonic political ideals. Regimes that do not at least claim to pursue rapid and sustained economic growth (“development”), popular political participation (“democracy”), and respect for the rights of their citizens (“human rights”) place their national and international legitimacy at risk. Without denying important practical and theoretical linkages, this article focuses on tensions between the logics of human rights, democracy, and development. In doing so, this article challenges the comfortable contemporary assumption that, as the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (adopted by the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights) put it, “[d]emocracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.”