Global inequality in historical and comparative perspective

Contributor(s): Thomas Piketty | Presenting new research produced by the World Inequality Lab, Thomas Piketty discusses recent trends in global inequality, analysing the historical movement toward equality and future prospects for more redistribution. This lecture includes preliminary results from the Global Justice Project. Combining comparative historical data series from the World Inequality Database with global input-output tables, environmental accounts, labour force surveys and other sources, the Global Justice Project explores what a just distribution of socio-economic and environmental resources could look like at the global level from 2025 to 2100 – both between and within countries – in a way that is compatible with planetary boundaries. The project partly builds on the analysis and proposals set out in Thomas Piketty’s Brief History of Equality, extending them into a broader and more comprehensive global framework.