Date & Time
July 08, 2025
09:00 AM - 05:30 PM ET
- Overview
- Agenda
Globally, one in five people live in highly unequal societies. Forty-nine countries, encompassing about 22 percent of the global population, had a Gini index above 40 according to the latest round of household data. Concerns about the impact of rising inequality have intensified in these and other countries. As part of our new vision to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet, the World Bank is now explicitly monitoring inequality.
This event will reflect on the impact economic inequality has on development and development policy, leading into the 11th Meeting of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ), co-hosted by the World Bank and George Washington University. The ECINEQ meeting will bring together leading scholars from around the world to discuss recent research and findings on economic inequality.
| Time | Session | Description |
| 9:00-9:15 | Welcome Coffee | |
| 9:15-9:30 | Opening Address | |
9:30-10:30 |
Session 1: Does Inequality Matter for Development?
Moderated Discussion
Chair: Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa, Aix-Marseille University |
In this opening session, a former and current World Bank Chief Economist will discuss their views on the importance of tackling inequality for economic development. |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break |
|
11:00-12:00 |
Session 2: A Closer Look at Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean
Moderated Discussion
Chair: Andrew Dabalen, World Bank |
Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa are the regions with the highest levels of inequality. This session will take a closer look at recent inequality trends and discuss policy priorities for these two regions. |
12:00-1:30 PM |
Lunch Break |
|
1:30-2:30 PM |
Session 3: A Fresh Look at Inequality: New Data, Methodologies, and Estimates
Moderated Discussion
Chair: Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva, World Bank |
This session will showcase innovations in data and methods used to measure inequality. It will present a new data set on global wealth inequality, a new collaboration between leading inequality scholars to settle their differences on diverging inequality trends, and a new indicator to measure the multidimensional nature of inequality. |
2:30-3:30 |
Session 4: New Perspectives on Social Mobility: New Data, Methodologies and Estimates
Moderated Discussion
Chair: Vito Peragine, University of Bari |
This session will showcase innovations in data and methods used to measure social mobility, including a new global dataset on intergenerational income mobility and a new measure of upward mobility. |
| 3:30-4:30 PM | Coffee Break |
|
4:00-5:00 |
Session 5: Leveraging Tax Administrative Data to Study Poverty and Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Moderated Discussion
Chair: Kyle Ian Mcnabb, World Bank |
This session will explore how tax data labs can deepen our understanding of poverty and inequality in low- and middle-income countries. It will examine the practical challenges of establishing these labs, including bureaucratic hurdles, partnership dynamics, and data limitations in complex settings. Real-world experiences from Brazil, Honduras, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia will illustrate these themes. |
5:00-5:30 PM |
Closing Reflections |
|