Global inequality is huge — but so is the opportunity for people in high-income countries to support poor people

Few things are more surprising than data about income inequality around the world. Our intuitions about this can be wildly off the mark.

In the Netherlands, the average person’s income over two weeks is more than the entire yearly income of the average person in Malawi.1 Global income inequality is staggering.

But we can also flip this insight around. Given vast inequality, those of us living in rich countries — even on an average income — find ourselves in an extraordinary position to do good.

In this article, we explain the data that shows the scale of this opportunity and explore how those in rich countries might seize it.