Study finds coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating global poverty
A major study finds people around the world are becoming increasingly concerned about impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on the divide between rich and poor.
The study by Glocalities market research agency covered surveys on 8,700 people in 24 countries around the world with a focus on how the pandemic was impacting the jobs markets and people’s feelings about income inequality.
Authors of the study, covered in a report by the World Economic Forum, said that the pandemic had exacerbated the public concerns about income inequality, as many respondents to the survey had urged immediate government interventions to redress the widening gap between rich and poor.
International charity organization Oxfam issued a report last month showing that the pandemic had caused a double increase in the number of people living in poverty around the world to more than 500 million.
The same report said that the world's billionaires had benefitted from the pandemic as they saw their collective wealth increase by $3.9 trillion between March and December 2020 to reach $11.95 trillion.
“It has slapped people in the face and made them realize that things are not going well,” said Ronald Inglehart, one of the lead authors of the study by Glocalities market research agency.
“Feelings of being upset, being afraid, feeling let down, feeling like 'I have no prospective anymore' are on the rise,” said Martijn Lampert, the other author of the study.
Both the authors said they had personally seen evidences of a rise in negative sentiments about the economic impacts of the pandemic among their own university students.
A third of 18-34 year-old people surveyed at the end of 2020 said they were mainly concerned about income inequality rather than unemployment or economic growth in the aftermath of the pandemic. That was several percentage point higher than what existed before the pandemic erupted in early 2020.
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