At the global level, economic crises, armed conflict, public health emergencies, food insecurity and climate change have all threatened the realization of human rights. Within this constellation of factors, the alarming intensification of inequality in income and wealth has emerged as another area of growing concern. The human rights framework offers partial guidance on the implications of our increasingly polarized societies, but gaps remain. Given the sharp rise in inequality in recent decades, it is critical to more fully understand the connections between the realization of human rights and inequality—how we think about and measure inequality, the degree to which growing inequality threatens basic rights, and what the human rights framework says, and does not say, about inequality.
People experience inequalities across a number of dimensions, for example in educational attainment, health and in the distribution of power. The free time men and women have is unequally distributed, once demands for both paid and unpaid work are taken into account. Inequalities are also measured between individuals, between households, between social groups (e.g., race, gender, and ethnicity) and between countries.
In defining inequality, one important distinction is between “horizontal” and “vertical” inequality. Horizontal inequality occurs between culturally defined or socially constructed groups, such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, caste and sexuality. Vertical inequality occurs between individuals or between households, such as the overall income or wealth distribution of an economy.
