Goal 10 Facts and Figures

Reducing inequalities and ensuring no one is left behind are integral to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Inequality within and among countries is a persistent cause for concern.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic appear to be reversing any positive trends of narrowing income inequality. The pandemic has also intensified structural and systemic discrimination. Emerging markets and developing economies are experiencing slow recoveries, widening disparities in income between countries. The number of refugees and migrant deaths worldwide reached the highest absolute number on record in 2021.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine rages on, forcing even more people from their homes and creating one of the largest refugee crises in recent memory.

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The effects of the pandemic have intensified social exclusion. Among the 18 countries which have data for 2020, two thirds saw rates of relative low income increase in 2020.

Projections suggest that between-country inequality rose by 1.2 per cent between 2017 and 2021, the first such increase in a generation. Before the pandemic, inequality was expected to have fallen by 2.6 per cent over the same period.

Income inequality within countries will also have increased around 1 per cent, on average, in emerging market and developing countries, halting the steady decline seen in these countries since the start of the millennium.

Roughly one in five people have experienced discrimination on at least one of the grounds prohibited under international human rights law, such as ethnicity, age, sex, disability, religion and sexual orientation.

In some countries, women are more than twice as likely as men to experience discrimination on the grounds of sex. One third of persons with disabilities experience discrimination.

A decline in the labour share of income from 2014 to 2019 ? from 54.1 per cent to 52.6 per cent ? represents upward pressure on inequality.

By mid-2021, the number of people forced to flee their countries had grown to a record high 24.5 million. For every 100,000 people worldwide, 311 are refugees outside their country of origin, up 44 per cent from 216 per 100,000 people in 2015.

Countries in Northern Africa and Western Asia were the largest regional source of refugees (8.4 million), followed by countries in sub-Saharan Africa (6.7 million), and Latin America and the Caribbean (4.5 million).

As of 23 May 2022, more than 6 million people in Ukraine had moved to other countries to escape the conflict, with at least 8 million people displaced inside the country.

In 2021, 5,895 people died fleeing their countries, surpassing pre-pandemic figures and making 2021 the deadliest year on record for migrants since 2017.  

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