World Inequality Report 2026 is the most authoritative and wide-ranging account available of global trends in inequality. Researched, compiled, and written by a team of world-leading economists, the report builds on the 2022 and 2018 editions to provide policy makers and scholars everywhere up-to-date information about an ever-broader range of countries and about forms of inequality that researchers have previously ignored or found hard to trace. Inequality has increasingly taken center stage in public debate as the wealthiest people in most parts of the world have seen their share of the economy soar relative to that of others. The resulting political and social pressures have posed harsh new challenges for governments and created a pressing demand for reliable data. The World Inequality Lab, housed at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, has answered this call by coordinating research into the latest trends in the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth on every continent. This new report not only provides up-to-date information about the history of inequality as well as inequalities across regions, climate, gender and tax, but it also offers comprehensive new analysis of privilege and unequal exchange in the global financial system and examines the impact of inequality on political behavior. World Inequality Report 2026 will be a key document for anyone concerned about one of the most imperative and contentious subjects in contemporary politics and economics.
