World Inequality Lab

📣 The World Inequality Conference 2026 continues on Friday 5 June at the Paris School of Economics. Day 2 will explore the links between inequality, climate change, economic democracy, and the institutions needed to support a just transition. The plenary programme will feature four sessions: 🌍 The Inequality Question in Climate Futures With Jofre Carnicer (Universitat de Barcelona), Lucas Chancel (Sciences Po), Olivier De Schutter (Université catholique de Louvain) and Céline Guivarch (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech). ⚖️ Compressing the Wealth Scale, Democratizing the Economy With Jean Drèze, Marc Fleurbaey (Paris School of Economics), Isabelle Ferreras (F.R.S. - FNRS) and Ingrid Robeyns (Universiteit Utrecht (Utrecht University). ⚡ States vs Markets in the Energy Transition With Lucas Chancel, Thomas Melonio (Agence Française de Développement) and Mariana Mazzucato (UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). 🌐 Do We Need a Bretton Woods Reset to Save the Planet? With David Adler, Ha-Joon Chang (SOAS University of London), Paula Druschke, Jayati Ghosh (University of Massachusetts Amherst) and Gastón Nievas (Paris School of Economics). Moderated by Marie-Yemta Moussanang You can explore the full plenary programme as well as the parallel sessions here: https://wic2026.wid.world Recordings of the plenary sessions will be made available after the conference for those unable to attend in person.

The climate debate has long focused on what people buy and consume. But what about the question of who owns and controls the assets that ultimately generate emissions? In our latest blog post, Cornelia Mohren of the World Inequality Lab argues that it’s an angle that leads directly to the problem of extreme wealth inequality. Whereas the richest 10% of the world's population account for 47% of emissions using a consumption-based approach – already a huge proportion – when looking at who owns the companies that cause emissions, that figure rises to 77%. Read the post here: https://buff.ly/Ela8god #LSEInequalitiesBlog

📣 The World Inequality Conference 2026 begins next week at the Paris School of Economics. This third edition will bring together the research community for three days of discussions on inequality, democracy, taxation, climate change, and the major economic and social transformations shaping the 21st century. The first day of the conference will be structured around the launch of the Global Justice Report and three plenary sessions: 🌍 How Much Do We Need to Degrow to Save the Planet? With Jason Hickel (ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Tejal Kanitkar (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research and Nicholas Stern (The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). 📖 Utopia and Dystopia in the XXIst Century With Kim Stanley Robinson and Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics, EHESS - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales). 💰 The Future of Billionaire Taxation With Sarah Perret (OECD - OCDE), Emmanuel Saez (UC Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality & Mobility, University of California, Berkeley) and Income Inequality. and Gabriel Zucman (Paris School of Economics, University of California, Berkeley). You can explore the full plenary programme as well as the parallel sessionshere in the comments. Recordings of the plenary sessions will be made available after the conference for those unable to attend in person.

The 56,000 wealthiest adults on the planet – a group that could fit inside a single football stadium – own assets three times as large as those of the poorest half of humanity combined, writes Ricardo Gómez-Carrera (World Inequality Lab), in this blog post summarising some of the key findings of the World Inequality Report 2026. But such levels of wealth inequality, while extreme, are not inevitable. Indeed, “inequality is a political choice”, Gómez-Carrera writes, with two policy levers in particular having the potential to redress these imbalances… Read the post here: https://buff.ly/XRlOQB0 #LSEInequalitiesBlog

In Johannesburg today, with President Cyril Ramaphosa, leading scientists and government representatives from around the world, to build an organization the world needs: an IPCC for inequality. A permanent international body on inequality is the best answer to attacks on multilateralism and science, one that speaks to issues people care about throughout the world, and on which their governments can act. Since 2000, the top 1% of the world population concentrated over 40% of all new wealth creation. These trends are unsustainable in many ways. Research and international cooperation are essential to invert them. More soon on what came out of today’s discussions.

It was a pleasure to welcome Amira Saber, Egyptian senator and President of the Human Rights Committee, to the World Inequality Lab this week. She met with our co-director Rowaida Moshrif for a rich exchange on inequality and taxation, climate change, and international cooperation. كان من دواعي سرورنا استقبال عضو مجلس الشيوخ المصري أميرة صابر قنديل، رئيسة لجنة حقوق الإنسان، في مختبر اللامساواة العالمي هذا الأسبوع. التقت بمديرتنا رويدة مشرف في حوار ثري تناول اللامساواة والضرائب، وتغير المناخ، والتعاون الدولي.

📣 Public registration is now open for the World Inequality Conference 2026, taking place 4–6 June 2026 at the Paris School of Economics. This third edition will bring together the research community, for three days of discussions on the various dimensions of inequality and its interconnected challenges in the 21st century. The conference will be structured around three pillars: 1️⃣The release of the Global Justice Report 2️⃣ Plenary sessions with leading speakers 3️⃣Parallel sessions featuring the latest academic work in the field    Attendance is free of charge, and registration for the general public is now open until 15 May 2026. We’re pleased to share the programme for the plenary sessions below. ⬇️ You’ll find the registration link in the comments. 🔗 We look forward to welcoming you in Paris!

  What drives land inequality in rural India? Nature, history, or markets? Using data from 270,000 Indian villages covering around 650 million people, economists Nitin Kumar Bharti, David Blakeslee, and Samreen Malik examine how natural conditions, historical institutions, and economic integration shape land inequality today. KEY FINDINGS: 1️⃣   Land inequality is extremely high. The top 10%, and top 1% of households own 44% and 18% of total land area, respectively. On average, the largest landholder controls about 12% of village land, and in some villages a single owner controls more than half of all agricultural land. 2️⃣  Agricultural productivity is strongly associated with higher land inequality. Villages with more favorable agro-ecological conditions tend to exhibit greater land concentration, increasing the share of land controlled by large landowners.   3️⃣ Historical institutions leave persistent effects on land distribution. The villages falling under the direct-rule of British colonialism tend to have higher land inequality compared to those which were under Indian rulers.   4️⃣ Market access does not fully eliminate historically rooted inequalities. Proximity to towns, roads, and markets appears insufficient to overturn deeply embedded patterns of land inequality shaped by natural conditions and institutional history.   ⤵️ Study link in comments

👏 We’re delighted to share that Lucas Chancel, Co-Director of the World Inequality Lab, has been nominated for the 2026 Best Young Economist Award. Awarded by Le Monde and Le Cercle des économistes, this prestigious award recognizes economists whose work contributes to both academic research and major public debates in France and internationally. Beyond individual achievements, it also captures how the discipline itself is evolving. This year’s laureate, Adrien Bilal, signals a growing focus on climate within economics - an evolution that Lucas’s nomination also reflects, by bringing environmental and social inequalities to the forefront of economic thinking. 👉 To better understand how climate and inequality are interconnected, see our latest Climate Inequality Report: https://lnkd.in/e9MxeZri

How does the international system actually work in practice? Who holds decision-making power, who finances global public goods, and who ultimately benefits from them? In new study, Paula DRUSCHKE and Gastón Nievas Offidani study the global public system over the past century. They build a dataset covering the finances and governance of major international organizations from 1920 to today. This includes the League of Nations, the United Nations and its specialized agencies (such as WHO, WTO, ILO, UNESCO), the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank), the European Union, and major regional development banks. KEY FINDINGS 1️⃣ In many financial institutions, voting rights are effectively “priced”: the more a country contributes, the more influence it gets. For example, the United States holds 16.6% of IMF voting power. When including other rich economies this rises to around 70%, while paying 26 times less per vote (as a share of GDP) than poorer countries. 2️⃣ In institutions where voting power is concentrated, funding tends to go to countries aligned with the most powerful players. For example, at the IMF, 67 % of loans go to G7-aligned countries, which account for only 6% of the population and 3% of GDP. By contrast, the United Nations, which operates under a more democratic governance structure, does not exhibit this pattern. 3️⃣ This shows that alternatives exist. Moving toward more representative governance structures would help align contributions, decision-making, and outcomes, making international cooperation both more equitable and more credible. Some proposals could include: 🔹Ending veto power in the UN Security Council 🔹Moving away from GDP-weighted formulas 🔹Making contributions more progressive: richer countries should contribute more (as % of GDP) 🔹Introducing double majority voting: decisions should require the acceptance of 55% of the countries representing 65% of the population ⤵️ Study link in comments