Levels of financial inequality leave vast majority in poverty
The significant and ‘unfair’ level of financial inequality in countries around the world will be discussed at a free public event organised by the Leicester Actuarial Science Society (LASS) at 2:00pm on Wednesday 10 February in the Rattray Lower Ground Floor Lecture Theatre.
A recent report by Oxfam has suggested that the 62 richest people in Britain have a combined wealth of £260.4bn, which exceeds the income of the poorest 30 per cent of the population combined.
Prominent actuarial mathematician Andrew Smith and Peter Thompson, the Master of the Worshipful Company of Actuaries, will be speaking at the event on the topic of Readjusting the Rations, based on the theme of inequality and its economic consequences highlighted in a paper recently published by the Actuarial Profession’s Financial Inequality working party.
Nick Foster, Lecturer in Actuarial Sciences, said: “The Readjusting the Rations paper, while eschewing a naïve equality of distribution as both unattainable and unworkable, recognises that the extreme concentration of wealth or income in the hands of a tiny few, leaving the vast majority in poverty, seems both unfair and inefficient. The paper considers what the current levels of inequality are, and how they compare with history and across countries.”