Conflict-driven income inequality in the 21st century

Income inequality is on the rise almost everywhere – within countries as well as among them. High and increasing inequality breaks with common norms of fairness and equity, and it has a range of well-documented adverse effects, including for social cohesion and wellbeing. Although conflict sometimes may be a consequence of unequal income distribution, it also is a central driver of increasing inequality. This study presents a novel scenario-based analysis of how inequality might evolve over the course of the 21st century. To this end, we first quantify the historical (1960-2020) association between armed civil conflict and indicators of income inequality within and between countries (Gini scores, 80/20 income ratio). In a subsequent step, we draw on long-term (2021-2100) projections of country-level characteristics from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenario framework, in combination with SSP-consistent conflict-adjusted GDP per capita projections from our earlier work, to estimate future changes in inequality along five distinct scenarios. Moreover, we conduct a counterfactual analysis to explore the potential for successful peacebuilding to contribute to common global goals on reducing inequalities. Results tbc.