India ranks 76th on WEF's Social Mobility Index, Denmark tops the list

The Global Social Mobility Index is designed to provide policy-makers with a means to identify areas for improving social mobility and promoting equally shared opportunities in their economies.

BS : India has been ranked very low at 76th place out of 82 countries on a new Social Mobility Index compiled by the World Economic Forum, while Denmark has topped the charts.

The report, released ahead of the 50th Annual Meeting of the WEF, also lists India among the five countries that stand to gain the most from a better social mobility score that seeks to measure parameters necessary for creating societies where every person has the same opportunity to fulfil his potential in life irrespective of socioeconomic background.

Increasing social mobility, a key driver of income inequality, by 10 per cent would benefit social cohesion and boost the world's economies by nearly 5 per cent by 2030, the WEF said.

But, few economies have the right conditions to foster social mobility.

Measuring countries across five key dimensions distributed over 10 pillars health; education (access, quality and equity); technology; work (opportunities, wages, conditions); and protections and institutions (social protection and inclusive institutions) shows that fair wages, social protection and lifelong learning are the biggest drags on social mobility globally.

In the case of India, it ranks 76th out of 82 economies. It ranks 41st in lifelong learning and 53rd in working conditions.

The Areas of improvement for India include social protection (76th) and fair wage distribution (79th).

The inaugural Social Mobility Report showed that across the Global Social Mobility Index, only a handful of nations across the 82 countries covered have put in place the right conditions to foster social mobility.

The top five are all Scandinavian, while the five economies with the most to gain from boosting social mobility are China, the United States, India, Japan and Germany.

"Creating societies where every person has the same opportunity to fulfil their potential in life irrespective of socioeconomic background would not only bring huge societal benefits in the form of reduced inequalities and healthier, more fulfilled lives, it would also boost economic growth by hundreds of billions of dollars a year," the WEF said.

How to end the billionaire raj? Thomas Piketty back with 1,200-page guide

The book is a sequel to 'Capital in the 21st Century,' which has sold more than 2.5 million copies in 40 languages since 2013, according to its publisher.

Thomas Piketty’s last blockbuster helped put inequality at the center of economic debates. Now he’s back with an even longer treatise that explains how governments should fix it –- by upending capitalism.

The French edition of “Capital and Ideology,’’ weighing in at 1,232 pages, comes out on Thursday (English speakers will have to wait till next year for a translation). It’s a sequel to “Capital in the 21st Century,’’ which has sold more than 2.5 million copies in 40 languages since 2013, according to its publisher.

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Nobody can be sure how many of that book’s buyers actually got through all 900-something pages. But its impact has been undeniable.

Six years on, there are more politicians pledging to redress the skewed distribution of income and wealth. (One of them, US presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, worked with two former Piketty aides to design a wealth-tax proposal.)

And it’s become common to hear inequality described as an urgent problem by billionaires like Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio.

All that suggests policy makers and investors would do well to acquaint themselves with Piketty’s latest thoughts -- which sound pretty radical.

Sacred property

“The time has come to exit this phase of making property sacred, to go beyond capitalism,’’ the economist told French magazine L’Obs.

Piketty says he’s improved as a writer. “If you read one of them, read this one,’’ he told L’Obs.

And he says his new book addresses two shortcomings of the last one, which was too focused on Western economies, and didn’t give enough space to the political ideologies that lie behind inequality.

“Capital and Ideology’’ ranges across time and geography, with analysis of colonial, slave-owning and communist economies, and references to India, China and Brazil.

“In this book I will try to convince the reader that the lessons of history can be leaned upon to define a more demanding norm of justice and equality,” he writes, in an extract from the new book published by Le Monde newspaper.