Globalisation may not have increased income inequality, after all

Working out who earns what is surprisingly tricky. Both the very rich, who sometimes try to keep their wealth from the taxman, and the very poor, who are sometimes mistrustful of clipboard-wielding officials, are especially hard to pin down. Nevertheless, before the covid-19 pandemic, household surveys consistently found a fall in the number of people living in poverty. The World Bank counted 659m living on less than $2.15 a day in 2019, down from around 2bn in 1990.