Ben Crow, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Suresh K. Lodha, a professor of Computer Science at the same university, have teamed up to produce this thorough and disturbing examination of global inequalities brought on by exploitation and exclusion — economic, power, social, access, health, educational, and environmental. They write in the introduction that when two percent of adults possess more than half of all global wealth, when one child in seven dies before the age of five in Sub-Saharan Africa, when one in five girl children is allowed to die young, or is selectively aborted, as happens in China, many consider that unjust.
Capitalism has created great engines of wealth for corporate CEOs and others, but it also brings about inequality and unemployment. Yet, at least one opinion poll suggests that 70 percent of Americans believe "personal attributes, like hard work and drive, are more important to economic mobility than external conditions," and that the majority believe that "it is more important to give people a fair chance to succeed than it is to reduce inequality in this country." (Pew Foundation, 2010). This old paradigm needs to be chucked. The data in this fascinating atlas ought to open many eyes to present-day realities.
Here are some facts and figures drawn from research around the world:
• "40% of the world's prisoners are in China and the USA."
• "The USA was responsible for 41% of the world's military expenditures in 2008."
• "1 in 20 people in the USA is living 50% below the official poverty line."
• "Almost half the global population lives on less than $2.50 a day."
• "Brazil and Indonesia accounted for 68% of the world's deforestation from 2000 - 2005."
• "Urban air pollution caused 800,000 deaths and nearly 8 million years lost to disability in 2002."
• "Around 17 children die very minute from largely preventable causes."
• "Indigenous peoples: 5% of the world's population 15% of the world's poor."
