Global inequality panel is a chance for research to change lives

Between 2000 and 2024, the richest 1% of people captured 41% of all new wealth. By contrast, just 1% was captured by the poorest 50%. These and other data on both income and wealth inequality were outlined in a commentary article published in Nature last week (J. E. Stiglitz et al. Nature 657, 345–348; 2026)

Why we need an International Panel on Inequality

Although income inequality has been falling, rising wealth inequality is a problem because it slows social mobility, feeds political polarization and erodes trust in institutions, say the article’s authors, who include Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-prizewinning economist at Columbia University in New York, and Winnie Byanyima, the head of the United Nations’ agency to combat AIDS, in Geneva, Switzerland.

It’s concerning that so much is known about the causes and damaging consequences of severe inequality but that this knowledge has failed to prompt meaningful action from politicians. The authors’ solution is for researchers to step up and be heard: they propose a body called the International Panel on Inequality (IPI). This would involve a group of around 40 specialists reviewing the research on inequality and putting the knowledge before policymakers.

The proposal for the panel has the backing of the UN and the African Union — along with more than 700 economists and other scholars of inequality. The governments of South Africa, Brazil, Spain and Norway are providing support.

The authors are calling for more governments to join them, and Nature urges them to do so, including by providing financial backing. We also encourage the IPI’s founding team to establish a transparent application process for participating on the panel. The founders’ ambition is for a diversity of voices to be represented. They must now establish an open process to fulfil this promise.

Tried and tested

The IPI team plans to examine government policies that are designed to lower inequality, including those that have worked and those that haven’t, and understand and report on the reasons behind the outcomes. Data on income and wealth are typically collected using household surveys. But two groups in society tend to have low response rates to surveys — the wealthiest and the poorest.

These groups are, arguably, among the most important to inequality research. Various researchers are testing collection methods other than surveys, such as administrative data from records of taxes and welfare benefits. Such data might yield more accurate information, but the work is scattered. A review of the evidence by one body would be a valuable endeavour.

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The inequality panel is inspired, in part, by the UN-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Geneva. It reviews global research on the causes and extent of climate change, on climate impacts and on the costs of climate action, periodically reporting back to its member governments. It’s a tried and tested method for providing robust scientific evidence to policymakers, but there are significant, and important, differences between how the IPCC functions and how the inequality panel would operate.

The team proposes that the IPI would also be a UN-affiliated body, but it would be attached to the United Nations University — a global think tank in Japan that does research to benefit member states. Unlike the IPCC, the authors do not suggest that the IPI will be an intergovernmental panel. This means that governments will not sign off on summaries of its reports, which happens with the IPCC. For the IPI, the panel members would assume this role.

There are benefits to greater independence from governments, especially at present. The IPCC was established in 1988, when the cold war meant that there were still marked geopolitical tensions, but when countries disagreed much less on scientific issues than they do today — both Russia and the United States appointed researchers to participate in the IPCC. That has now changed, with the US exit from the IPCC during Donald Trump’s second presidency, amounting to a huge loss of US research capacity from the panel’s work. As a more-independent body, IPI’s leadership would be free to choose its authors and reviewers from any country and reach conclusions on the basis of the evidence reviewed.

Why there needs to be a global debate on inequality

But there’s one aspect in which the IPI should follow the IPCC model: it needs to be open to researchers who want to participate, in the way that a climate scientist can apply to participate as an IPCC reviewer. The organization regularly puts out calls for expertise. Being an IPCC author or editor requires a nomination by government and is more complicated, but the rules and methods are publicly available.

The study of inequality, like all fields, includes debate and disagreement. There are researchers who regard a degree of inequality as necessary for economic growth, and those who take almost the opposite view. There is tremendous value when researchers from different perspectives assess studies in a spirit of collegiality. It will help to ensure that conclusions represent the best consensus of specialists.

The proposed IPI is the best chance so far for inequality research to inform policy action that can change lives for the better. It must ensure open opportunities for those who wish to be considered as members. This is also important for credibility. The diversity of voices that the IPI wishes to achieve will be key to good outcomes and, importantly, will help to build confidence among a wide group of stakeholders in those outcomes.