Episode 1: Inequality

In the first mini-series of Good with data we explore one of the most important issues in global development today, the Leave No One Behind Agenda; what it means, why it matters, and how we can make it a reality by improving data and making best use of existing data and evidence. 

In this episode we discuss inequality; the focus of SDG 10 and an issue that has risen up the international development agenda in recent years. But it’s one thing to acknowledge the problem, and quite another to know what to do about it. 

Our guests are:

• Andrés Barrios Arenas, the National Coordinator of Nuestro Presupuesto (Our Budget), an initiative for people to analyse, understand and campaign for changes in state budgets in Mexico.
• Anda David, a Senior Researcher at the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) in charge of research programmes on inequality, poverty and international migration.
• Dr. Ellen Ehmke, a Senior Expert on Inequality at the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

For more on this subject, our briefing paper explores the relationship between inequality and poverty and some key indicators and associated data issues. An accompanying factsheet draws on this data to summarise recent global inequality trends. To learn why a concerted effort to understand inequality is so critical for development actors to realise the ambition of Agenda 2030, read our blog.

During the episode, we asked our panellists to share their recommendations for listeners to explore inequality issues further:

• Andrés recommended reading about the rights of indigenous peoples and the Mexican Zapatista movement.
• Anda recommended the short story The Great Silence, from the collection Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang.
• Ellen recommended the documentary Dear Future Children, resources offered by the Fight Inequality Alliance and the Pathfinders initiative.

Good with data is a production of Development Initiatives, a global organisation harnessing the power of data and evidence to end poverty, reduce inequality and increase resilience. 

To stay up to date with our work, follow us on Twitter or Linkedin, visit our website, and register for email updates.

We value your feedback! If you have comments or ideas for the show please contact us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a 5 star review wherever you listen. 

Transcript

Deborah Hardoon: 0:04

Welcome to Good with data from Development Initiatives. I'm Deborah Hardoon. And in this three part miniseries, I explore one of the most important issues in global development today, the leave no one behind agenda, what it means, why it matters, and how we can make it a reality by improving data and making best use of existing data and evidence. In this episode, I'm speaking with Anda David, who is a senior researcher at AFD, the French Development Agency, and she's in charge of the research programmes on inequality, poverty and international migration. We also have Andrés Barrios Arenas, who is the National Coordinator of Neustro Presupuesto, 'Our budget,' an initiative for people to analyse, understand and campaign for changes in their state budget in Mexico. And we have Dr. Ellen Ehmke, who works as a senior expert on inequality for the Robert Bosch Foundation. And Ellen was also a previous colleague of mine when we both worked on inequality at Oxfam. For this episode, we focus on inequality. Inequality has clearly risen up the international development agenda in recent years. It was once a concern largely of the political left and of social justice campaigners, but now I would say it's much more of a mainstream development issue. It's got its own Sustainable Development Goal, number 10, to reduce inequality between and within countries, and it's regularly referenced as a challenge by multilateral institutions, by donors, by country governments all over the world. So turning first to Anda, AFD the French Development Agency coordinated the EU funded research facility on inequalities. So how did that investment come about? And how does this work on inequality fit with and inform AFD other international development priorities?

Anda David: 1:53

Thank you, Deborah. And thank you for the opportunity to participate in such an exciting conversation. I would say that, from a research point of view, AFD had been working on equality from the early 2010 around mostly on the link between equality and poverty. When I joined the agency in 2015, we have started a couple of projects, looking more specifically at inequalities and the dynamics that this creates within societies with a policy point of view. This was also linked to the fact that we are a development bank. And we have been working more and more with middle income economies, where inequality was becoming more and more of an issue at that time. In parallel, the EU had launched this big inequality programme, of which the inequality research facility is a part of, because faced with the new agenda, they wanted to better understand how donors could position themselves on the topic of inequality. And most importantly, how could we work better amongst us in order to support the partner governments in addressing the issue? So they were looking for, for like minded donors that were interested in working with them on applied research on vertical inequality, because we, as donors, we knew less on how do we actually work on economic inequality, as this was more of a contested, I would say, domain in the cooperation space before the agenda 2030. So we started working with them. I think that what made a lot of sense for us at that time, and still makes today, is that we launched a lot of projects with local research centres. These research projects, they had a very clear policy orientation and support to the government in designing policies that could have an impact on reducing inequalities. And we had this focus on developing not only data, but also tools that could support both the government and the civil society, in this joint, I would say, approach to inequalities. So in terms of operations, given all the research that we did on the topic, this translated for AFD into a much more social oriented approach. So we now have alongside our climate strategy a social link strategy, which comes with objectives. And we have invested a lot in policy dialogue. Again, as a development bank, we have our funding operations so we both support our colleagues in designing operations that could have an impact on inequalities, but we also do a lot of policy dialogue with the partner governments in identifying options, policy options for for the reduction of inequalities.

Deborah Hardoon: 5:05

Thank you Anda that's really interesting and particularly wanting to find out on how research and data and evidence is seen within AFD and and the EU that has funded this as supporting that policy dialogue and that, and that approach to tackling institution. I mean, at DI we're really interested in the role of data and evidence, so, so how, how do your, how does your institution see the the kind of role of data and research in that respect?

Anda David: 5:35

I would say that there are two prongs to to this. First of all, until, of course, until recently, there has been a lot of production and use of data on poverty in low and middle income countries. So we had all these reports around poverty, diagnostics of poverty, etc. But what we did realise was that we don't have the same thing for inequality, we don't have a comprehensive set of data or a comprehensive report of what we know about inequality in a given country. This is even I would say worse in low income countries. We have recently been working in, working in Mali with the Luxembourg income study, because we know a lot of poverty in Mali, but very littel on inequality, and it's actually one of the few low income countries that has income data. So we tried to work together to harmonise their income data with the big data set that the LIS Centre has, which is mostly on high and middle income countries, in order to see whether this approach to income inequalities in low income countries would make sense that we actually saw that it makes a lot of sense. So first of all, we see as a priority to use existing data and try to promote data harmonisation across countries. And the other tool that we see as as being very important are these inequality diagnostics that we've started to produce mostly with the African Centre of Excellence for inequalities research. Again, these are comprehensive reports that we try to do with the help of local research centres and the National Statistical Offices across different dimensions of inequalities, the implication of the National Statistical Offices we saw was crucial, not only because it allows them to strengthen their capacities in analysing data on inequalities, but it also provides them and then more broadly the civil society with the state of play of inequalities in a country, which has the legitimacy of being co-produced with a national entity with national researchers. And it serves as a basis for for dialogue on what are now the options, what inequalities should we reduce first, what could we use for that? What other data is also necessary? Because we see, especially in Africa, the issue of wealth inequality data, panel data in order to look at dynamics of inequalities is still lagging compared to countries in Latin America for instance, not to mention European countries.

Deborah Hardoon: 8:34

So the data and evidence is the really foundational stuff, not just for AFD's work, but for the national governments and for National Statistical Offices as well. Can I ask you [Ellen], the Robert Bosch Foundation have identified inequality as one of six global issues. So it works alongside climate change democracy, immigration, society, migration and peace? How would you characterise the foundation's approach to tackling inequality with respect to how it interacts with those other critical global development issues?

Dr. Ellen Ehmke: 9:07

Yeah, thank you, Deborah, also, for the invitation and for being part of this debate today. And you're right that the in 2019 to 2020, the Robert Bosch foundation underwent a strategic review of what used to be their international cooperation work. And then from that they developed these six topics which you've just mentioned, in which we now work, but obviously issues like climate change, democracy, inequality, migration, they're all interlinked. And so from the beginning on when these new topics were, when it was decided that these would be the new topics, it was also decided that they should work in cooperation. So very often, we actually we have strategies for each of these topic areas in which the Robert Bosch foundation as a philanthropic funding institution works, but we also work together with the colleagues from other teams. So we might fund or actual examples of our work include the climate justice Resilience Fund, in which both the team inequality and the team climate change have a stake, or the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, which we cofund between the teams democracy and inequality team. If we look at the approach of the inequality team, more specifically, the choice was to work with systemic approaches to inequality, and what do we mean by that? Systemic approaches recognise the multi dimensionality of inequality, you've said before, there are vertical inequalities, the horizontal inequalities and they intersect, they overlap, and they're compounded inequalities resulting from race, gender, but also the location, religious markers that are applied to people and then that exclude them from either political participation or from the labour market. And that's something that has very much informed our strategy. Furthermore, a systemic approach, I think, is characterised by looking at the root causes of inequality. And that understands inequality essentially, as an, as a result of inequalities of power. Even if we look at economic inequalities, or inequalities, in political participation, they are expressions of unequal power. So that's sort of the baseline. That's the thinking behind our inequality approach. And we are a small institution compared to, you know, the big development agencies such as the AFD, so we had to decide what do we do within that? And we decided to focus mainly on strengthening the capacities of actors that already work in that field, either through supporting them in their knowledge production, supporting network building, supporting capacity building, so that groups that are maybe marginalised in several ways, have more abilities to join important debates to be part of the data making to be part of policy processes.

Deborah Hardoon: 12:47

Has this approach changed over time? Has the thinking within the foundation evolved to be more focused on power? And on local actors? Or has that always been the case?

Dr. Ellen Ehmke: 12:59

So the foundation is old, but it has a legacy of more than 50 years, but the inequality team, as I said, is pretty new. We see ourselves definitely as a learning institution. And so I would say yes our strategy is continuously revisited received as an emerging strategy. And we also have processes in which we ask our partners to evaluate our work and so on. But I would say there have been no major shifts within these only two years. What becomes increasingly clear, and yet already maybe was something that we saw at the outset of this, of forming an inequality team is that it's not only the who we fund, or the what we fund, but also very much how we fund. So it's a lot about the trust that we bring towards the grantees to know that we acknowledge that they know best of what needs to be done. And I think this is particularly true. When we talk about intersectional inequalities were often groups that have experienced multiple ways of discrimination are best placed to formulate what would be the the policies or the measures that would help them, and so we try to give a lot of, Yeah we try to encourage our partners to really develop their own agenda and not be overly prescriptive on our side to, to fit into the strategy that we have developed. And that's also why we think it's important to leave some leeway in their strategy and not to make it overly donor driven.

Deborah Hardoon: 14:53

Yeah, I think that very much resonates with how DI's you know, work and thinking in this space has evolved as well, I mean, I think when you're an international organisation working on inequality, you have to look at the power imbalances embedded in your, you know, position and role in the partnerships that you have in delivering inequality, programming and work. So I think that's something that, you know, we can relate to very much as well. Andrés, Neustro Presupuesto, has been set up explicitly to tackle inequality within the Mexican context, can you share with us how this cause of inequality has been received in Mexico, both in terms of the government you're advocating towards, as well as the general public and civil society that you're working

Andrés Barrios Arenas: 15:44

Sure thank you Deborah for the invitation. And we are a very small, collective effort which with? works in sub-national level. And we see that the issue of budgets is a political [issue]. And this is used as an [inaudible] that can be seen between the political class without taking account the real function of the budget, which is that the citizens have access to their rights. So to put in manifests, that the public isn't spending, the public spending is not used for the urgencies and the necessities of the citizens. We have a [inaudible], and this is the [inaudible] the government to address the problem. So we find a resistance from the government to accept what we propose, for example, all the years, we have, we are saving and delivering to the Congress changes in the proposals before the budget is approved. And we have not received any single official answer from our[solicitation] to the Congress. So the civil societies have found a real interest in have access to the data and the permission, we have work. They really understand these complex works of the budget with our tools, and the information we provide have empowered them and helped them to elevate the political cost of not to address the agendas that are urgent or not attended by the government. For example, have to successfully put on the public conversation issues that are that were not sufficiently attended on the public spending, like the problem of locating victims of enforced disappearances. that is a big problem here in Mexico and in Jalisco where we are working, it's a very big problem. And we have achieved a budget reallocation to have more resources to attend this problem like three years ago. We also constructed a strong relationship with journalists and with the academics who use our information that we have generated to help them [write] strong stories, and have data with evidence for the public spending. So in those terms, I think that the government is not very happy for what we are doing, that we are exceeding on what they are doing with the with the budget. But we have made a very good and strong relationship with journalists and with the civil society, the activism, to give them tools, and put on their agendas data that is very relevant to support their audiences.

Deborah Hardoon: 18:21

It sounds like you're using data in a really concrete and practical way to draw attention to issues that are, you know, otherwise very hard to articulate and hard to kind of build a kind of position around. I was wondering, in terms of using that data and using some of those tools in that that way, what, what are the methodological and technical challenges that you've come across? And how, how have you addressed them over the years and over the work of the organisation?

Andrés Barrios Arenas: 18:50

Well, the first time we got organised, it was like six years ago, and we only had access to a PDF document of several tousands of pages of data. And with a team of volunteers, they offered to capture all that data in spreadsheets. In some days, it was a very ethical action. So we have data to be analysed in an easy way. So one of our first demands in that years was to have all that public data, that is public, in an open data format. So when we have, we achieved to have access to the data in spreadsheets instead of PDFs, we focused our efforts more on having a community of citizens who understand what is a public budget, and how to read the data and what it means to the daily life for the people that, that data. So we started having teaching sessions and supporting sessions for those who were interested on understanding the budget. And on this last years, we have focused our work more on developing tools and methodologies that can lower the entry barrier to understand the public budget so we can expand to the platform. And we are fighting to have all the data of the 32 states that integrates the country in Mexico. And also we are working a lot to classify the public spending programmes to match the Sustainable Development Goals. So we have, we can have now an historical information on how the governments have been spending the public money on policies for the people to have access to their basic human rights. And the main goal, with all this data, is that the this could be very accessible to every person who wants to understand the public money, and how it is spent and how it affairs to their daily life so. So a source of information for the academy and for also the governments so they have a better understanding on how the money issues, we say that our mission is to democratise the budget so we are in that line of work.

Deborah Hardoon: 21:06

That's quite an epic evolution from a an original PDF that's not digitally readable. I was wondering what what do you think are the main kind of findings? What are the things that have surprised you the most when you've been analysing that data?

Andrés Barrios Arenas: 21:22

Well we have a lot of surprises like why the government is spending on fish. And that the other reasons, so we started to know programmes that the government that we didn't know the six steps and agendas that the government is addressing that we didn't know that they need to address. So I think it has been a very interesting relationship, to know not just the obvious things that the governments do on their daily basis, and what they also say, in the public speech that they do that they want to be heard, to, of their work. But also, we have learned a lot of work that to the government that we didn't know, that is necessary to, for example, to protect the oceans. So they have to spend in[inaudible] to have research facilities to study the species of the ocean that is in our coast. But also, we have found that there are a lot of agendas that are not in the really interest of the governments. And they are very addressed in the speech and the public speech. So the government always is saying that we are attending to this problem, or this population. But when you see that in the money, when you see that in the budget, it's a lie. So we have found that a lot of examples of how the government is on their public speech and on their promotional communication, presuming, assuming that they are doing some things and you can really see in the numbers that they are not addressing the money that is necessary to really address that problem.

Deborah Hardoon: 23:10

You've got holding the government to account for their rhetoric and promises alongside making visible some of the stuff that's being spent that the public weren't otherwise aware of. I mean, Anda how does this correspond with the research that you've been doing? The kind of trends and patterns in, I guess particularly whether or not the rhetoric in the promises around inequality and targeting the most marginalised groups is met by progress and real meaningful investments and policies?

Anda David: 23:42

I have two examples. One, which is directly linked to this question, the other one, which is actually linked to Mexico, and how important Andrés' project is, but I will start with the first one, because one of the projects we've been working on is a partnership that we've set up with the Commitment for Equity Institute, directed by Nora Lustig, which has developed this methodology of fiscal incidence analysis, which allows one to specifically look at the impact that social spending and visual and fiscal spending has on reducing poverty and inequality or increasing poverty and inequality. So they did this analysis they did for most of Latin American countries, and they've also worked with the World Bank and IMF who are using it in their assessments. And what we've done is work with them and developed either new analysis or update existing ones, but this time jointly with the government in order not only to see exactly by how much for instance, this type of subsidy or that or of value added taxes, impacts poverty and inequality, but also to train the government officials in using this methodology as a tool for policy simulations. So we've run this analysis for now we've done it for Morocco, South Africa, and Kenya. And it's quite interesting because it sort of, it helps a lot actually to reconcile the rhetoric and the impacts. It allows you to not just look at the real distribution of income, but also monetize public services such as education or health and try to see exactly who does the spending benefit to. One, I would say, perplexing result that we found in South Africa was that public housing spending is quite regressive. We didn't expect that. And what we realise is that this is actually due to the fact that the data that is being used by the government in order to identify who should receive it is old. So actually, when one looks at today's distribution, those who have received it in the past, have seen their income increase because of it, because it actually had progressive impact. But it sort of increased their their well being level by that much that today, it appears that the spending is actually regressive; it benefits, thouse, those that are richer. So that was quite interesting. And now on a different level in on a different sphere. What I wanted to mention for Mexico is that, again, in the framework of the Research Facility on Inequalities, we've done a project with, with [inaudible], in 2017, on specifically this question on perceptions of inequality, perceptions of taxation, of individuals, and our starting point was to try to understand why do we see such a relatively high tolerance of inequality in Mexico, especially compared to other countries in Latin America. So the colleagues from from economics and say they ran a couple of surveys. And this was quite interesting to see by how much people actually overestimate the share of the rich people in the country, which was quite unexpected for us, but also, the discrepancy between what they perceive as a fair taxation, how much they see themselves as paying in taxes, and how much they think they should be paying, because when one looks at it, they they think that they are overpaying taxes at the level that they would like to pay in taxes, it's actually the real level, and the level that they would like to pay in taxes, that does not correspond to the level of desired inequality. So these kinds of misperceptions and the importance to inform the population on the budget, on the implications of public policy, on the implications of state of inequality, we see these as as emerging topics, which are really crucial right now.

Deborah Hardoon: 28:27

Thank you Anda, I particularly liked your first example on public housing, because I think that also reiterates the value and importance of robust and timely data at all stages of the policy and programming process, not just to kind of measure the impact, but really to inform the targeting and direction of policies, they definitely one for the kind of robust, timely data cause. Ellen, I was wondering what your reactions were to the the research and the findings presented by Andrés and, and Anda?

Dr. Ellen Ehmke: 29:01

Super interesting at first? No I think they really also show the breadth of the type of research and data that we have on inequality, and maybe also what we still need on inequality. So I think what we see in the area of inequality is that we have some fields in which we actually already have quite good data. So for example, the extent of income inequality in high income countries. And it's really not a question of, of better data, in many cases, but of where we rather lack, action than data, a bit like corresponding to the climate crisis, where we also we know we've identified quite a number of problems. But the question is, how do we get to action? And I think that's also that has been a very important angle for us in terms of what additional data do we need on inequality? Because, of course you can do research on all kinds of aspects of inequality and, and you know, drill deeper and find new methodologies. But the crucial link here is what happens with this data? How accessible is it like Andrés said, like, who can and will use this data to change something about inequality? And I think that has for us been a very important angle, when we look at what kind of knowledge production on inequality that can be data, but that can also be narratives that could be stories, that could be movies, do we need to show the the negative effects of inequality on people in poverty, but also on societies as a whole? And, yeah, and so I think it's been super fascinating to listen to the examples that you've brought, and we ourselves have also, yeah funded projects that were more data oriented, one of them is making voices heard and count in the leaving no one behind partnerships were we also in with Development Initiatives, which I think is a great example for that which, which has at its core to generate that data with marginalised groups about the types and forms of exclusion they experience. And then to take that data to their local and then maybe even national decision makers or administration to show to show that to them. And I think that's the kind of data that will then also be put in use, by social movements, by administrations. And I've been super intrigued also, by the public benefits and the regressive social spending, I think these are things like the example that Anda mentioned that, also, to have this counter, to find these counter intuitive data and to unveil additional injustices, maybe in programmes of which we thought that they were already benefiting more marginalised sections of the society, I think that's also a very important point. And more generally, I think that data and different kinds of knowledge have been very important to inform our strategy and are important today. So for example, we have an inequality advisory group at the Foundation, which brings together a very diverse group of people, Lucas Chancel from the World Inequality Lab is in there, but also Aya Chebbi, who was the African Union youth envoy and is a very strong feminist voice from the Pan-African youth movement and to, to accept that there are such different views on inequality that we have to take into account. And that they cannot be conflicting, you know, and to to navigate between that that is something that is very important for how we work on inequality.

Deborah Hardoon: 33:24

Thank you, Ellen. And, and I think you spoke there about how do we get to action, and I'm thinking about action in the future and, and the likely impacts of climate change on the poorest people around the world. And I'm thinking about Covid, and the increase in food and energy prices. And already we've seen how the countries and communities furthest behind have had the least resources to respond to either with either vaccines or social protection, while the richest in society have been protected from the very worst impacts, and in some cases, have even profited from this, these shocks. So my question to all of you in terms of looking forward and thinking about action and thinking about the future, is whether you see an explicit focus on inequality to be practically and politically useful in the context of these challenges. And given what you all do, I'm assuming the answer to the first question is yes. So what are the new frontiers for campaigning for research and for funding for inequality? Perhaps first, I can ask you that Andrés.

Andrés Barrios Arenas: 34:29

We need political motivations for the governments to address inequality problems in long term, for example, in the political system in Mexico it's very difficult to the politicians to have these long term visions, they have to deliver short term results to keep their career in the next election. That is every three years. So I think we need more participation from civil society, who are the ones who no matter who is doing the government, they are the constants, they are always there, and also we have to have to address to the deputies in the Congress, to really do their work, to be a counterweight to the government. So I think locally, we need to address these two efforts to professionalise and empower the civil society, and to fight to release separation of powers and to, to fight that, for the deputies in the Congress to do their work. Also, I think that the collaboration with international efforts, like the ones that are here shared in the podcast, it's very useful, because at a local level, sometimes the politicians are very looking just for what is said on the newspaper, what he says in social media, and how that will affect to the next election, and to start to have an external voice of experts that are from a different country that are very serious about their work, and to share knowledge, that it's not, it's not seen, it cannot be seems like a political, I don't know issue or to fight against the government, or that it's used by the, the opposition, it's just a voice of experts of another country of an international ONG(NGO). That is saying, this is a big problem that you need to address. It's very useful, because it gives us in the local activism, a lot of empowerment and a lot of tools to go with the ones who are taking the decisions, and to share them that our reputation is real. It is not a political [inaudible]. It's just the real problems that they need to address now. So I think this is very important. And also, I think that we need urgently to create imagined images of the future that we want, in order to have a consensus of what we really do want, and a consensus of what we don't want; what we want to avoid. So no matter if you are opposition, if you are democratic, if you are Republican, if you are from the left or from the right, we have a minimum common place a minimum common point of where we want to be in 10, in 15 years. So I think it's very important to start studying that, and creating these images of the future. So we can create a common place that is the future and the place that we all will be sharing, for sure.

Unknown: 37:53

Thank you Andrés, what about you Anda?

Anda David: 37:57

So I really liked Andrés' last point because, it resonates with a lot of things that I see here in South Africa right now, in terms of, well, I wouldn't take it that's more lack of consensus, but also on the importance of imagining futures. So we are, in this point, especially here, around just transition where there is a pressure to exit coal at the same time, South Africa, it's one of the most, if not the most unequal country in the world. So putting inequality at the heart of the debates about the future, especially regarding climate change, it's crucial, and it's also crucial because as, Andrés was highlighting the importance of, of all of us discussing, we see that we cannot, today we can't say that we are all discussing a future, because not everyone is at the table of discussion. And not everyone's views are taken into account and this is because of inequality. So we will not be able to co-construct a future if we live in such an unequal world as we are today. So this would be to respond to your first question on whether it's important to bring inequality at the centre and definitely that is a yes. And related to that, I think what is quite important is to start reimagining the models of development. Until now, everyone, well maybe not everyone but lots of people say OK, countries will grow, probably there will be inequalities, they will pass because poverty will be reduced. And even today, there is this discussion that ok poverty has decreased quite significantly, so, we can't actually say that we have been doing things right. I'm not sure that's true, because inequality has increased by by this much also because the past growth, the past ways of development, have led to the situation which is not only unsustainable from an inequality point of view but also from a climate change point of view. So we need to reinvent how economies should develop themselves how countries can prosper, taking into account the right to develop of low income countries, taking into account the boundaries of the planet. And for all of this I think, we need to have more voices from the low and middle income countries. And we need to think a little bit outside the box, we can't just continue and especially in the academic part, to think about countries developing as they had been in the last I would say 20, 30 even 40 years. And I think one important point linked to this, which sometimes in the inequality discussions can slip out of the discussion is the fact that the highest inequalities today remain the global inequalities, inequalities between the poorest on the planet and the richest on the planet. And it's, I think it's quite tricky, to, to sort of not forget this, especially for a donor as AFD this is quite important because it repositions all the discussions around ODA, around the efforts that high income countries need to make. So while, I would say focusing on within country, inequality is important, especially in countries where these inequalities are increasing at an alarming pace, we shouldn't, leave on the side these global inequalities because also these are the ones that will be most impacted by climate change. And then on again, on the frontier part, there are still a lot of interesting research items on the future agenda. There's all this issue between, again, social mobility, what are the prospects of social mobility? How does this link to, to international migration? We know that in the development of all I would speak for European countries, has been a lot on importing labour force, no one's child today would like to work in a low skilled occupation, and this has been bridged by international migration. But what will happen in 50 years from now, let's say? And another, I think, important issue would be that of the disconnect between the research, the politics, the perceptions, you have mentioned, then I think Ellen was also mentioning the issue of climate change. But even within inequality, we see that there's a lot of papers that say inequality is bad, it's bad for growth, its' bad for social cohesion, it's bad for institutions, but then not much is being done about it and the politics behind it is part of the reason, the state of inequality is the reason also why nothing is being done. So thinking around how to reconcile these issues could be quite interesting for the future.

Deborah Hardoon: 43:32

It sounds like we've got just a hell of a lot of work to do, doesn't it? Particularly not ignoring the political and the power side of that? This is not a technocratic issue to do overcome, Ellen.

Dr. Ellen Ehmke: 43:50

Yeah. So starting with your initial question of it being practically and politically useful to focus on inequality, I would, I would like following also what Andrés and Anda have said, I think we really, we can;t solve these problems without looking at inequality. So it's absolutely essential to understand that for issues such as climate change, or health like the cross inequities in the distribution of vaccines, it's not a lack of the technologies not being available, but it's often it's a question of distribution. And in order to solve these problems, it's essential not only to look at the question, and that's what the inequality agenda is all about, not only to look at, of what we have too little, but also to look at of what we have too much. So to understand that there are many aspects we have all the resources we need if we look at the global scale, but the question is how can we put them to use to give everyone access to adequate health provision, to education, to housing, to fulfil their social rights and to give people an opportunity to live in dignity. And so yes, my answer is absolutely clear; yes. And I also really like what Andrés said about the imagining the future that we that we want to live in. And in terms of watching, you know, like, a donor like the Robert Bsoch Foundation can do or what we also hope to do is sometimes to look for what you could call the pockets of the future, where do you we already see that movements, organisations have found good ways of dealing with certain problems associated for example with inequality and then help them bring those to scale, make them visible, make them grow these out of these niches to become more visible as, as ideas for, for a broader public. But from what we...one thing that I think has been missing a bit from from our discussion, but just because the topic of inequality is so big is also the whole question of technological change and inequality, and how these, how digital developments both reproduce and deepen existing inequalities and how this has been really accelerated again, during the COVID crisis. And so I think that's also an area in which we are already work[ing] and where we want to continue to work. And overall, what I also really hear from what Andrés said about the importance of international NGOs echoing what movements at the local level say, is this network building. Because essentially, it's, it's a, it's an issue that none of us can solve by ourselves. So it's a collective action problem and one of the things that we probably need more of is the network building and investment in those movements that challenge inequality and to make them successful, is really one of the things that we hope to contribute to.

Deborah Hardoon: 47:37

Thank you Ellen, and thank all of you for your time and your contributions. I think it's been a fascinating conversation but before we sign off, I was just wondering if you wanted anything for our listeners to take away, to read, to think about, anything you want to plug, as our listeners digest what we've been discussing here?

Andrés Barrios Arenas: 47:59

Well, I will recommend the public statements that make the Ejército Nacional Zapatista, de Liberación Nacional...it's a movement from the south of Mexico that is known as the Zapatismo, and they are indigenous people that are fighting for the territory, that are fighting for the culture, and fighting for the language, and they are fighting for the land and the climate. So both from the perspective of the culture and it's very, very rich, very different, and the[inaudable]. So it's very interesting to see what they are saying. And you can find in all languages all their statements because they have a very good network of people who translate all their messages. So I will recommend to follow the Ejército Zapatista.

Deborah Hardoon: 48:56

Thanks, Andrés we'll provide some links associated with that in the, in the pages for this podcast.

Anda David: 49:03

I need to find the name but there's an audiobook, well actually an audio short story, which was also published as a short story, I will share with you, which actually links a little bit the way that we as humans see the planet that links it to climate change to inequality as a whole. So I will, I will send you the link because right now I don't have the name of it. I think it's quite interesting because again, it brings into perspective how crucial ecological and social issues are and how we actually need to completely change our way of thinking if we want to, to continue to move forward.

Dr. Ellen Ehmke: 49:57

Maybe to recommendations because one of the things that, that I think is as crucial, as you know, inequalities overwhelming is also how much agency there is by people that, that challenge it already and by young activists and the strength of their movements, and there's one move movie called Dear Future Children, which I quite like on activism in Hong Kong and the democracy movement. We've also spoken about this, you know, not being something up for technocratic solutions but this whole business, if you want, of reducing inequality is one that needs to happen democratically and not by, you know, technocratic solutions. So that Dear Future Children that is a recommendation. Overall, I think that the Fight Inequality Alliance as a big movement of, yeah as a sort of as a platform of movements maybe rather, offers also a lot of really great resources on the events they have, and recordings of sessions that they did, where they really showcase the breadth of opportunities for organisations to engage around inequality. And from a less movement side may be the Pathfinders Initiative, which showcases rather ... the work of governments that have decided to take up inequality and which really highlights the solutions that can be found on a more government level.

Deborah Hardoon: 51:39

These are some great recommendations. Thank you all, we'll make those links available to our listeners. And wrapping up I think, you know, pulling some key messages out is all about putting inequality at the heart of the debate about the future, seeing it as a collective action problem with equal representation around the table and building that future vision. So that's the kind of, you know, the aspiration and future though we would like to see. Thank you all to our listeners, we hope you found the discussion here interesting, useful, particularly in efforts to use data to leave no one behind. If you haven't already, I encourage you to tune in to our two other episodes in this series for more discussion on data systems and on risk in the context of the Leave No One Behind Agenda. Good with data is a production of Development Initiatives, an independent organisation that enables action through data driven evidence and insight to end poverty, reduce inequality and increase resilience. For more on what we do and the issues discussed in this episode, go to devinit.org, that's d e v i n i t .org. This series is produced by Sarah Harries, Joshua Flynn, Anna Hope, Tim Molyneux and me, Deborah Hardoon.