‘Contemporary global inequalities are close to their early 20th century level, at the peak of Western imperialism.’
World Inequality Report 2022
While major world economies shudder at the prospect of economic disruption as a result of conflict in the Middle East, we should not forget that by far the biggest global economic challenge is the acute polarisation of wealth. It's also a big issue within the United Kingdom: there's a new book called, ‘Challenging Inequalities’ by Paul Johnson, former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and now Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, being released on Tuesday 28th April.
He was interviewed on the BBC's Today programme on Saturday 25th April (link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002vm6t — start listening from 1:42:15), setting out the impact of wealth inequality on social mobility, health and political participation.
But the problem is much worse globally, as UBS has shown in its Global Wealth Report 2025. The disparities are just colossal: their ‘Global Wealth Pyramid’ shows that while the poorest 40.7% of the world's adult population owned just 0.6% of its total wealth, averaging just $1,748 each, just 1.6% own 48.1% of wealth, with their average being $3.8 million. Meanwhile the wealthiest 31 people own 30% more wealth than the poorest 1.55 billion adults put together.
However, when you drill down into age differentials — to which Paul Johnson also refers in his interview — it's even more acute than that. The median age in Africa is just 19.5 years with an average adult wealth of less than $2,000 among a population of 1.58 billion people. In North America, the average age is 38.9 years with wealth per adult at an average $593,347, among a population of less than 400 million people.
Looking in more detail at the generational differences in the United States, one of the UBS charts shows the acute differences in assets owned by generations net of mortgage debt. The Baby Boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964, own over $83 trillion — that's nearly double that owned by those aged 46 to 61, and nearly five times as much as those born since 1981: and that's in the world's most developed nation. No wonder UBS is forecasting a huge level of inter-generational wealth transfer over the next 20-25 years.
It's understandable that we are so focused on what goes on within our own nations, as Paul Johnson showed in his Today programme interview. The Share Foundation also places a real imperative on taking action within the United Kingdom: it is wholly committed to the challenge we face here. That's why the charity is working so hard to deliver the Child Trust Fund scheme.
In that respect, we were pleased to see that some action is underway at HM Treasury, with a new proposal to write to those aged 21 and over, using their current postal addresses as held in PAYE and Student Loan records — this is the closest we've come to the ‘automatic release at 21’ proposal which The Share Foundation has been advocating for HMRC-allocated accounts for the past two years and which would ensure that nearly £400 million was delivered to low-income young adults forthwith if enacted today.
But the global perspective must be addressed as well, and that's what the charity Share Alliance is pushing for. It's a much more complicated challenge, because there is no global governance structure to drive the solutions. Therefore, rather than tackling the cause of the problem, nations simply give their attention to dealing with the downstream effects: such as mass migration and geopolitical conflict.
In the absence of global governance, we need to consider what options are available for taking matters forward. This is why the conference on 14th/15th May at the Institute for Fiscal Studies is a good opportunity, not only to build some academic rigour behind these ideas, but also to look at policy options for putting them in place.
It is not an argument for governments to apply wealth taxes in order to fund bloated public expenditure on universal welfare. It's rather a call to empower young people through international inter-generational rebalancing, together with exploring other ways of enabling individuals across the world to benefit from direct participation in wealth creation: such as ‘Stock for Data and Creativity’. We want to set out how the human life cycle can be better recognised in economics, in order to empower disadvantaged young people with resources and life skills, by allowing wealth creation to flow through to new generations more effectively.
At present, the lack of effective global governance means that such endeavours must be voluntary in nature, and must be based on philanthropy. This has become all the more necessary as nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom have significantly reduced their overseas aid budgets.
The international media could play a major role in helping to make this a reality. In early 2024, Share Alliance prepared a one-page summary headed, ‘Could Africa benefit from incentivised learning?’, suggesting that CNN could team up with some of its African corporate banking clients in order to deliver something similar to The Share Foundation’s Stepladder Plus programme in the United Kingdom: drawing wealth from their first world audience in order to benefit disadvantaged young people throughout Africa.
That proposal was drafted as a very early stage in Share Alliance’s journey, but there will now be a good opportunity to explore concepts such as these in more depth at their inter-generational rebalancing conference on 14th/15th May at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. In-person attendance is free of charge: please book now, at www.sharefound.org/conference .
The conference will be accessible by webinar as well as ‘in-person’, and the various presentations will be available after the event on YouTube and on Share Radio’s Share Sounds podcast library.
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio