Few things are more surprising than data about income inequality around the world. Our intuitions about this can be wildly off the mark, underscoring the importance of learning about this data and giving to reduce global inequality.

In the Netherlands, the average person’s income over two weeks is more than the entire yearly income of the average person in Malawi.1 Global income inequality is staggering.

But we can also flip this insight around. Given vast inequality, those of us living in rich countries — even on an average income — find ourselves in an extraordinary position to do good.

In this article, we explain the data that shows the scale of this opportunity and explore how those in rich countries might seize it.

Less Than 2% of the Income of the Top 10% Global Earners Equals the Entire Annual Income of the Poorest 10%

Here's the question that shifted our perspective on giving to reduce global inequality: how much would it take from the richest 10% of people in the world to match that of the poorest 10%?

Our colleague Pablo Arriagada calculated the answer using data from the World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform.2 As the chart below shows, it takes less than 2 cents out of every dollar. That's less than one-fiftieth of their income, or one week of income in a year.

The second revelation that shifted our perspective on global inequality is that we are in the richest 10%. When we think of global inequality, it's easy to picture “the rich” as someone else — those with garages full of sports cars or taking private trips to space. But the richest tenth of the world includes us and likely many others who don’t intuitively think of themselves as “the rich”.

For a one-person household, an annual post-tax income of $20,000 puts you in this category. That income bracket captures more than half the population in rich countries, like the Netherlands, the US, or Germany.

Realizing this is both sobering and empowering. It means we're not just observers of global inequality — we're participants with big levers to act on it. We can reduce it. We’ll explore three avenues through which we can use this opportunity to support others.

Read the full article about giving to end global inequality by Simon van Teutem and Joe Hasell at Our World in Data.