The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2005b, 20) documents that the poorest 40 per cent of the world’s population, that is, the billion people who live on less than two dollars a day, account for 5 per cent of the world’s income, while the richest 10 per cent, most of them living in high-income countries, account for 54 per cent of the world’s income. When assessing global poverty, it is important to keep in mind that inequalities are not just intrinsic to differences in income between countries or between groups and individuals within a country. The levels of opulence on display in our age are unprecedented in history, and they are.
