Further, a growing polarization among countries has been accompanied by a rise in inequality within most nations, adversely affecting their growth and poverty alleviation efforts. The recent surge in inequality has been triggered, at least in part, by policies that are part of the Washington Consensus. It therefore seems clear that, to deal successfully with poverty, nations must not only tackle the traditional sources of inequality but also introduce macroeconomic and structural policies that avoid the distributive distortions of the Washington Consensus. The report concluded that increasing global inequality has been a persistent feature of this period, with a noticeable worsening over the 1990s, and that there is little evidence that this tendency has since been reversed. Other studies that have attempted to account for changes in per capita income both between and within countries suggest that global inequality has risen during the past three decades mainly because of an increase in between-country inequality.
Inequality is affected by many factors.
Some recent mainstream studies have argued that long-term income inequality is stable, and thus inferred that growth is the only realistic option for poverty alleviation. These findings, however, run counter to a host of country and regional studies, and an examination of the analysis procedures suggests the conclusions were biased by the methodology used. The results found that in only 16 of the 77 countries analyzed is there evidence of a decline in income concentration over the long-term. In fact, inequality rose in 45 of the countries, and stopped declining over the long-term in 4 countries. Inequality has risen or stopped declining in nations accounting for 79 per cent of the population and 77 per cent of the GDP-PPP of the sample countries.