{"id":338943,"date":"2019-09-08T15:30:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-08T13:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=338943"},"modified":"2019-09-06T16:43:52","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T14:43:52","slug":"these-are-the-most-unequal-countries-in-the-world-including-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wealth\/338943\/these-are-the-most-unequal-countries-in-the-world-including-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"These are the most unequal countries in the world – including South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three African billionaires now have more wealth than the poorest 50% – or 650 million people across the continent, according to a new Oxfam report looking at wealth inequality on the continent.<\/p>\n

The report showed that seven of the 20 most unequal countries by income are African \u2013 including the four most unequal: Swaziland, Nigeria, South Africa and Namibia.<\/p>\n

“Most measures agree that income inequality in sub-Saharan Africa has hardly budged over the last 25 years,” Oxfam said.<\/p>\n

“Research by the European Commission found that, while the period of growth after 2000 did lift incomes across the board, the bottom 40% saw no greater benefit than other income groups.<\/p>\n

“Evidence from the World Bank highlights that the challenge will be even greater for some African countries.<\/p>\n

“Between consumption actually decreased for the bottom 40% in a third of the sub-Saharan countries surveyed in their 2018 Shared Prosperity report.”<\/p>\n

The below graph shows the most unequal countries in the world using raw and adjusted gini measurements.<\/p>\n

The gini coefficient is a single number aimed at measuring the degree of inequality in a distribution. It is most often used in economics to measure how far a country’s wealth or income distribution deviates from a totally equal distribution.<\/p>\n

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The report estimates that there are currently 20 billionaires in Africa, living alongside 413 million people in extreme poverty.<\/p>\n

South Africa is home to five of these billionaires, as well as 50,000 millionaires.<\/p>\n

The most unequal country in the region, Swaziland, is home to one billionaire, Nathan Kirsh, who is estimated to have $4.9 billion.<\/p>\n

If he worked in one of the restaurants that his wholesale company supplies on a worker\u2019s minimum wage, it would take him 5.7 million years to earn his current level of wealth.<\/p>\n

Reducing inequality<\/strong><\/p>\n

While South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world, Oxfam recognised that it was also the African country doing the most to inequality.<\/p>\n

“Top-ranking South Africa is in second place for social spending, with a strong record of investing in health, education and social protection,” Oxfam said.<\/p>\n

“Their Africa ranking on labour rights and minimum wages is also reasonably high, coming in eighth. This may improve further if the government introduces a national minimum wage this year as planned, despite opposition.<\/p>\n

“The most impressive indicator, however, is tax progressivity, where South Africa comes first among African countries, and third globally.”<\/p>\n

\n

Read: How much you need to earn each month to be in the richest 1% in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three African billionaires now have more wealth than the poorest 50% – or 650 million people across the continent, according to a new Oxfam report looking at wealth inequality on the continent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":336531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9880],"tags":[26,7330],"class_list":["post-338943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wealth","tag-headline","tag-oxfam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338951,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338943\/revisions\/338951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}