世界不平等報告：到2050年 全球財富金字塔頂端1%的人將佔據全球收入的28% 如果不幸的話

載入超時，點擊重試

By EDUARDO PORTER and KARL RUSSELL DEC. 14, 2017

原標題： It』s an Unequal World. It Doesn』t Have to Be.

文章來源：https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/business/world-inequality.html

更多了解：世界不平等報告 http://wir2018.wid.world/

Global inequality, after widening for decades, has stabilized. The share of the world』s income captured by the top 1 percent has shrunk since its peak on the eve of the financial crisis. The bottom half of the population is reaping its biggest share of the global pie since Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States.

幾十年來，全球不平等現象一直在擴大，但已經穩定下來。自金融危機爆發前夕，全球收入最高的1%人群所佔的收入份額有所下降。自羅納德?里根當選美國總統以來，美國底層人口正收穫著全球最大的一塊蛋糕。

Inequality Stalls

（不平等的地位）

But here』s the bad news: The respite probably won』t last. Despite rapid strides among developing economies like China and India, which have been closing the income gap with the world』s richer nations, growing inequality within almost every country will drive a further concentration of income around the globe.

但這裡有個壞消息：這種暫緩喘息的機會可能不會持久。儘管中國和印度等發展中經濟體在縮小與世界富裕國家的收入差距方面取得了長足的進步，但幾乎每個國家內部日益加劇的不平等，都將推動全球收入進一步地集中。

Examining the 「World Inequality Report」 — published Thursday by the creators of the World Wealth and Income Database, who include the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez — it is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology. The report finds that the richest 1 percent of humanity reaped 27 percent of the world』s income between 1980 and 2016. The bottom 50 percent, by contrast, got only 12 percent.

瀏覽「世界不平等報告」——周四由 世界財富和收入資料庫 製作公布,作者包括經濟學家Thomas Piketty和Emmanuel Saez——人們很容易將收入的日益集中視為某種不可阻擋的自然力量，是全球化和技術驅動的經濟必然結果。報告發現，在1980年至2016年期間，世界上最富有的1%的人獲得了世界上27%的收入。相比之下，底層的50%只得到了12%。

Nowhere has the distribution of the pie become more equitable. In China, 15 percent of the income growth since 1980 flowed to the richest 1 percent of Chinese while 13 percent flowed to the bottom half. Even in egalitarian, social-democratic Europe, 1-percenters got 18 percent of the growth in the period. The bottom half got 14 percent. And among the more unequal regions of the world — the United States, say, or Russia — income disparities are reaching levels not before seen in modern history: The bottom half of Americans captured only 3 percent of total growth since 1980. The income of the bottom half of Russians actually shrank.

沒有哪個地方的餡餅的分配變得更加公平。在中國，自1980年以來收入增長的15%流向了最富有的1%的中國人，13%的收入增長則流向了人群的下半部分（後50%）。即使是在平等主義的社會民主主義的歐洲，1%的人在這一時期獲得了18%的增長。底層下半部分得到了14%。在世界上更不平等的地區——比如美國，或者俄羅斯，收入差距達到了現代歷史上從未見過的水平：自1980年以來，美國底層的人口只獲取了收入總增長的3%。俄羅斯底層下半部分人口的收入實際上縮水了。

Diverging Patterns

（不同的模式）

And yet, a careful examination of the data suggests there is nothing inevitable about untrammelled inequality. Take China and India, developing countries of billion-plus populations playing catch-up to pull themselves out of poverty. Incomes have become much more concentrated in both. But China』s economic strategy has delivered much more growth at a lower cost in terms of economic disparity. Comparing Europe with the United States and Canada offers similar contrasts.

然而，對數據的仔細研究表明，不受限制的不平等並不是不可避免的。以中國和印度為代表，發展中國家的10億人口正在迎頭趕上，以擺脫貧困。收入在這兩個國家都變得更加集中。就經濟差距而言，中國的經濟戰略以更低的成本實現了更多的增長。將歐洲與美國和加拿大相比，提供了類似的對比。

Policy, it turns out, matters. More aggressive redistribution through taxes and transfers has spared Europe from the acute disparities that Americans have grown used to. Unequal access to education is helping reproduce inequality in the United States down the generations. On the other end of the spectrum of development, China』s strategy based on low-skill manufacturing for export, and underpinned by aggressive investment in infrastructure, has proven more effective at raising living standards for the bottom half of the population than India』s more inward-looking strategy, which has limited the benefits of globalization to the well-educated elite.

事實證明，政策很重要。通過稅收和轉移支付的更積極的再分配，使歐洲免受美國人習以為常的嚴重差距的影響。不平等的受教育機會正在幫助美國在幾代人之間重現不平等。在發展的另一端，中國以低技能出口製造業為基礎的戰略，在基礎設施投資方面的積極投資，已被證明比印度更注重內部的（內向型）戰略更有效地提高了底層一半人口的生活水平，而印度的戰略則限制了受過良好教育的精英在全球化過程中的優勢。

Where is global inequality going? Policy choices — about taxes and education, employment rules and finance regulations — will play a big role in shaping how countries around the world distribute the spoils of growth in the future. But the most powerful force driving the distribution of income on a worldwide scale will be raw economic growth: if economic catch-up by developing nations shrinks the income gap between rich and poor countries faster than inequality increases inside each country, the global disparity of income will narrow.

全球不平等將走向何方？政策選擇——關於稅收和教育、就業規則和金融監管——將在決定世界各國如何分配未來的經濟增長方面發揮重要作用。但是，推動收入在全球範圍內分配的最強大的力量將是原始的經濟增長：如果發展中國家縮小與富裕國家間收入差距的經濟追趕速度，比每個國家內部的不平等的加劇速度更快，那麼全球收入差距將會縮小。

How World Income Grows

（世界收入如何增長）

The question is, how fast can developing countries grow in the future? The answer, unfortunately, is not fast enough. If China』s furious economic growth over the last couple of decades was not enough to bring about a more equitable distribution of income on a global scale, it seems hard to imagine the kind of economic miracle that could shrink the worldwide income gap.

那麼問題來了，發展中國家在未來的發展速度會有多快？答案是，有些不幸，還不夠快。如果中國在過去幾十年里迅猛的經濟增長不足以在全球範圍內實現更公平的收入分配，那麼似乎很難想像會有什麼樣的經濟奇蹟會縮小全球收入差距。

China』s economic miracle was an unprecedented feat: in one generation, an unproductive communist nation of farmers transformed itself into a manufacturing export colossus, a giant of capitalism. Since 1980, its share of the world』s income has grown to 19 percent from 3 percent. Its income per person has grown almost 15 times as fast as that of the United States and Canada, and almost 19 times as fast as that of the European Union — to 90 percent of the world average, from 15 percent. Once at the bottom of the world』s income distribution, Chinese are now much more broadly represented across the spectrum of the world』s income.

中國的經濟奇蹟是一個前所未有的壯舉：在一代人的時間裡，一個沒有生產力的communist國家把自己變成了製造業的出口巨人，一個capitalism的巨人。自1980年以來，它在全球收入中所佔的份額從3%上升到19%。它的人均收入增長速度幾乎是美國和加拿大的15倍，幾乎是歐盟的19倍，達到世界平均水平的90%，從15%上升到世界平均水平的90%。曾經位於世界收入分配的底部，中國人現在在整個世界收入範圍內的代表性更加廣泛。

China』s rising income was pretty much the only force pushing for a more equitable share of the spoils of growth, holding world inequality down even as the incomes of the world』s biggest earners surged ahead and workers in the industrialized world mostly got stuck. And yet it wasn』t enough.

中國不斷增長的收入幾乎是推動經濟增長更公平份額的唯一力量，即便世界上最大的收入人群的收入大幅增長，工業化國家的工人大多陷入困境，世界的不平等仍在下降。但這還不夠。

As China has become richer and its growth has slowed, its impact on how the world』s income pie is sliced is likely to be mixed: Once the income of the average Chinese exceeds the world average, Chinas fast growth will start adding to inequality, rather than mitigating it. And it seems implausible that India and sub-Saharan Africa, today at the bottom of the world』s income distribution, will experience anything in the coming three decades like what China experienced in the last three.

隨著中國變得更加富裕，經濟增長放緩，它對世界收入分配方式的影響可能是喜憂參半：一旦中國的平均收入超過世界平均水平，中國的快速增長將開始加劇不平等，而不是減輕其影響。印度和撒哈拉以南的非洲，今天處於世界收入分配的底部，在未來的三十年里，似乎令人難以置信，也將會經歷這一切，正如中國在過去三十年中所經歷的那樣。

The Future of Inequality

（不平等的未來）

Will poor countries make sufficient progress relative to their rich peers to bring more balance to the distribution of global income? Or will rising inequality within countries dominate? It depends on three forces: countries』 economic and population growth, as well as the evolution of inequality within them. The World Inequality Report takes a shot at projecting these forces, drawing from economic forecasts by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, population projections from the United Nations and the evolution of inequality in each country over 36 years. If you care about equity, it doesn』t look good.

貧窮國家相對於富裕的國家是否能取得足夠的進展，從而在全球收入分配中取得更大的平衡？或者，國家內部日益加劇的不平等將佔據佔主導地位？它取決於三種力量：國家的經濟和人口增長，以及它們內部的不平等的演變。世界不平等報告從經濟合作與發展組織的經濟預測，聯合國的人口預測以及36年來各國不平等情況的演變中，對這些因素進行了預測。如果你關心平等，它看起來並不太好。

If the evolution of income inequality in every country remains on the same path it has been since 1980, the plateau in global inequality since 2000 will prove to be but a temporary blip: by 2050, the bottom half of the world』s population will draw only 9 percent of the world』s income, a percentage point less than today. One-percenters at the top, by contrast, will reap 24 percent of the global income pie, up from 21 percent in 2016.

如果每個國家的收入不平等的發展演變仍然保持在自1980年以來的同一路徑, 那麼自2000年以來全球不平等的停滯期將被證明只是暫時性的一個小插曲：到2050年，世界人口的後50%將只佔世界收入的9%，比今天少一個百分點。相比之下，頂層的1%的人將獲得全球收入的24%，而2016年這一比例為21%。

But again, policy matters. Say countries decide to push vigorously back against inequality — as vigorously as the European Union pushed in the 36 years after 1980. In that case, the world』s income gap would even shrink a little: by 2050, the bottom half would get 13 percent of the pie; the share of the top 1 percent would shrink to 19 percent of the world』s income.

但是,重申一遍，政策是很重要的。比如，如果各國決定大力政策調整這樣的不平等——就像歐盟在1980年之後的36年里所推行的那樣。在這種情況下，世界的收入差距甚至會縮小一點：到2050年，世界人口的後50%將得到13%的總收入份額;前1%的人口佔據的份額將縮減到世界收入的19%。

What we probably don』t want the world to do is follow the trajectory of inequality in the United States. If it were to do that, by 2050 the few at the top of the pyramid would be drawing 28 percent of global income. The bottom half would get only about 6 percent.

我們可能不希望這個世界遵循的，則是美國式的不平等軌跡。在這種情況下，到2050年，金字塔頂端的少數人將佔到全球收入的28%。底層人口的後50%則只會得到6%。

Graphics data source: World Wealth and Income Database (WID - World Inequality Database)