Financial Transparency Coalition

Save the Children's Head of Research Alex Cobham has launched a blog that examines issues of inequality. Named "Uncounted," the blog has listed topics such as the life expectancy of indigenous peoples, caste and tribal poverty, and female illiteracy as those that reflect society's marginalization of individuals. At the same time, Cobham applies his inequality motif to tax issues, yet he notes a distinction between being "uncounted" by a lack of power and being "uncounted" by design. The latter "reflects the presence, not the absence of power."

This post is part of our series from speakers at the Task Force's 2011 annual conference, taking place in Paris October 6-7. For more information on the conference and to view live webcasts of the presentations in English and French, click here. You can also follow the conference on Twitter and submit questions for the presenters at #TFConf2011, or #TFConf2011fr for French. Large inequalities, both of income and wealth, have been steadily rising since the 1970s and 80s. Today, the top 20 percent of the population holds 70 percent of the total income. Inequality is far...

Most people know America is unequal. Many of us have heard the statistic that the richest 1% of Americans receives 24% of the nation’s income. This number looks big. It might even look huge. But if it doesn’t utterly shock you, you don’t really understand it. This graph illustrates inequality by lining up the incomes of the U.S. population along a football field with $100 bills.* The median U.S. family earns a stack of bills approximately 1.7 inches high—that’s $42,327 (this exercise assumes there are 250 bills in a 1 inch stack, which of course depends on whether or not...