A major survey conducted across 36 nations shows that economic inequality is a grave public concern around the world, with many people particularly worried about the influence that the super rich are having on policies and business decisions that exacerbate the wealth gap.
The survey of more than 40,000 adults, conducted by the Pew Research Center last year and published this month, found that a median of 54% of respondents across the countries said that they thought the chasm between the rich and poor was a very big problem in their nation. A further 30% said that they thought it was a moderately big problem. A median of 60%, meanwhile, said that the political influence enjoyed by the wealthiest individuals was a major contributor to economic inequality.
These views, Pew found, were particularly common among respondents identifying as being on the ideological left, though many of those who identified as being on the right agreed too. Ideological divisions, the research showed, were especially large in the United States.
The research comes just ahead of the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of world leaders and wealthy business people, hosted in the Swiss town of Davos. The meeting has long served as an impetus for economic justice advocates to call out corporate-driven inequality and greed, and the extent to which global wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few.
According to Oxfam, an organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice, three billionaires currently hold wealth equivalent to the combined wealth of 160 million people. Oxfam research has also shown that corporate CEO compensation has grown by around 940% since 1978. Compensation for workers over that same period has only increased by about 12%.
Pew’s latest research found that a median of 57% of adults across the nations polled said they expected children in their country to be worse off financially than their parents when they get older. Across 33 of the 36 nations included in the survey, the majority of respondents said that their nation’s economic system needs to be changed or reformed in order to combat rampant inequality.
This was a particularly prevalent opinion in middle-income nations across the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region. It was also common, however, across wealthier countries. At least six-in-ten adults in most of the European nations surveyed want major economic changes or complete reform, Pew found, while 66% of those questioned in the U.S. said that they were in favor of it.