Is Society Becoming More or Less Equal

Whether the world is moving towards greater fairness or sliding into deeper division is a question on which observers sharply disagree. After weighing the evidence, I conclude that societies have grown more equal in certain respects while becoming markedly less equal in others.

Those who detect rising equality can point to real and important gains. Legal rights once denied to women, ethnic minorities, and same-sex couples are now widely protected, and attitudes that were openly prejudiced a generation ago are increasingly condemned. Access to education and information has also broadened dramatically, allowing people from humble backgrounds to acquire knowledge and a public voice that were previously reserved for elites. By these measures, society is plainly fairer than before.

Yet the opposing view is equally compelling when attention turns to wealth. In many countries the gap between the richest and the rest has widened sharply, as a small minority accumulates vast fortunes while ordinary wages stagnate and the cost of housing soars. This concentration of wealth translates into unequal political influence, allowing the powerful to shape rules in their own favour. On this dimension, the trend is clearly towards greater, not lesser, inequality.

In my view, both observations are correct because they measure different things. Social and legal equality has genuinely advanced, and this progress deserves recognition. Economic inequality, however, has deepened and now threatens to undermine those very gains, since money increasingly buys advantages that formal rights cannot offset. The honest verdict is therefore mixed: we are becoming more equal in status but less equal in means, and the latter may ultimately prove the more decisive.