There has been growing interest in studying income distribution, inequality in wealth, and the underlying causes: Film Analysis on Wealth and Poverty Essay, SMU, Singapore

There has been growing interest in studying income distribution, inequality in wealth, and the underlying causes of the same in the rich Organization for Economic Co-operation Development (OECD) countries. Lately, interest in studying income inequalities has grown globally, constituted amid a global pattern of accelerating income inequalities, with greater resource accumulation among a small fraction of the population while the poorest struggle with meeting their everyday needs.

Inequality among and across nation-states is an outcome of the accelerated privatization of the global political economy, following the neo-liberal1 reforms of the 1990s. Singapore, as a model neo-liberal state in Asia, has witnessed growing income inequalities; in fact, it is the second most unequal country in the Asia-pacific, after Korea, with the top 10 percent owning 42 percent of the total income.

Singapore’s Gini coefficient in 2014 after taxes and transfers were 0.412, which is higher than most of the high-income OECD countries. It is also ranked close to major world cities such as New York and London in terms of its income inequality, which have income Gini coefficients of 0.475 and 0.436, respectively, followed by Hong Kong with 0.43 and Paris with 0.372.

The rankings of states on their ‘commitment to addressing inequality’ by Oxfam international placed Singapore at 149th among 157 countries, a very poor performance because of its tax programs and absence of state welfare. High and sustained levels of inequality, especially inequality of opportunity, can entail large social costs, and entrenched inequality of outcomes can significantly undermine individuals’ educational and occupational mobility.