Economic inequality
Factors proposed to affect economic inequality

There are various reasons for economic inequality within societies, including both global market functions (such as trade, development, and regulation) as well as social factors (including gender, race, and education). Recent growth in overall income inequality, at least within the OECD countries, has been driven mostly by increasing inequality in wages and salaries.

Economist Thomas Piketty argues that widening economic disparity is an inevitable phenomenon of free market capitalism when the rate of return of capital (r) is greater than the rate of growth of the economy (g). According to an IMF report in 2016, after reviewing four decades of neoliberalism, it had warned that certain neoliberal policies including privatization, public spending cuts, and deregulation, have resulted in "increased inequality" and are stunting economic growth globally.
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