 So this is a paper, and why is it sitting in this session? Well, the reason why it's sitting in this session is that it is concerned about growth poverty and inequality, and it's about sharing prosperity globally and domestically, and we're trying to link a couple of literatures, including the literature on benchmark incomes. But I'd like to just sort of say that this particular work is supported by the Norway Norways Foundation in a project which is implemented between University of Copenhagen and UNU-Wider with Rachel, who is with us here today. I'd like to acknowledge Laurence Rupp from the University of Oxford, Miguel Zarrasua from SOAS, and Borja Lopez-Noval, and they have been working with me on this study. And what we're really trying to do in some ways is to follow up some work where two of the co-editors together with myself are in the room, and I'd like to acknowledge them. Carlos Gardein is here, and Murray Labrand is here, because in many ways, a lot of what has sort of gone into what I'm going to try to present today were some of the questions that I were left with after all of the teaching that the two of them had done in relation to making sure that I at least got the basics right. So I'd like to acknowledge that as well. The first slide that then is going to come, you will have a more elaborate version of that in the introduction to this book. And it's really just the standard story, relative inequality has been falling for decades globally, and we by now are aware that this is driven to a very large extent by what's happening in China and India, because these are big countries that have been coming from below the mean to now being close to and even above the mean. At the same time, in China and India, we've seen increasing inequality, so domestically within countries. And this of course then leads to sort of speculating well, such a phenomenon, this might actually suggest some potentially important trade-offs. And this trade-off is not spelled out in people who speak about the SGGs, but it's actually inherently there between the SGG1 on the one side, no poverty or leaving no one behind, and the SGG10 about reduced inequality on the other hand. There's actually some tension there, some trade-offs there, which we had better try to understand. I'm not going to go into this, but these trade-offs are very much about where in the income distribution should we focus our attention. That's very much sort of what this paper, we're not trying to give any answer. This paper is still work in progress, and I want to stress that it's still work in progress. But we are trying to see whether we can somehow come up with an identification of these trade-offs in a way which can be helpful in policy discussions, so we can have sort of more meaningful debates about it. I mean, should you use resources, even if this means exacerbating global inequality, for example, as one provocative question, we'd like to have a topology where we can pursue these types of discussions. So we are really trying to link two literatures, the one on global inequality and then the literature that's sort of growing now on inequality benchmark incomes. And why is this interesting? But it is because that relative inequality measures, they are almost invariably associated with a specific benchmark income. And that's kind of interesting, right? I mean, because what this means is that once you've chosen your inequality measure, then you're having a benchmark income. And I'm going to show you why that's interesting. And I mean, it exists almost everywhere, and I'm not going to go into the specifics. But I mean, look at this one. If we assume here that the blue line is the benchmark, well, then any increases in income of those in the distribution who are above that benchmark will lead to increasing inequality. Those who are below will lead to decreasing inequality by that specific measure. And I want to stress that because, of course, different inequality measures, they have different properties. Something that, for example, Martin Rabalian has brought out extremely clearly in one of the chapters that I mentioned, or was in that book that I referred to in the beginning. It's actually probably one of the best papers ever written on, how careful we need to be in terms of measurement in relation to poverty and inequality. But keep this one in the back of your mind. Yeah. I mean, basically the point here is that knowledge of benchmark income levels could be used to predict the impact of inequality on subsidies or growth in a particular part of the distribution. Now, Larry did a first exploratory work with 10 countries. And basically what we are doing here is that we are employing a similar approach. And here, what we're really doing is that we are using, we are exploiting, if you wish, the massive work that Carlos has been leading in UNU Widers for a number of years. And I'd really like to play tribute to that work, because this is a massive effort that has been done and which will benefit work on inequality around the globe in the years to come. And part of that is making it more possible and easier for us to basically construct synthetic income distribution for different countries. And that's, to some extent, what we are relying on here. We're sort of using it. And I'd like to play that tribute because it's really very well-deserved. So basically what we do is we locate a percentile of income distribution where the benchmark income lies for all countries. And we also do that for the global income distribution. And for each country, we then consider where the domestic benchmark income lies compared to the global. Is it above? Is it below? Where is it above? Where is it below? And this basically sort of enables us to identify the range of incomes in which income growth or subsidies would lead to different outcomes in terms of the combination of changes in domestic and global inequality. And I sort of won't go through those in detail, but that's sort of part of it. And then we also then introduce and compare to where the country's domestic benchmark income lies in comparison to the national poverty line. And that's where you can kind of start getting a sense of why is it that I think this is potentially fascinating? I mean, as always, you never know. I mean, I started studying economics one September, exactly 50 years ago. And one thing that I have learned, in spite of all of the things I do not know, and I'm still learning about, there's one thing I do know is that you're sometimes in for surprises, sometimes also for disappointments. But I'm still sort of somewhat fascinated about this combination of growth, inequality, and poverty. I mean, sort of trying to really understand that. And I kind of have a sense that this benchmark thing might actually be helpful. So I mean, would these changes reduce both poverty and domestic inequality? Would they reduce domestic inequality, but not poverty? Would they fail to reduce poverty and increase inequality? I mean, answering those kinds of questions, I mean, I would assume that these are issues that a minister of social development, a minister of finance, and minister of whatever it might be, and including the president and the prime minister, might want to at least relate to. I'm not going to go through these. These are just our results based on the background work. And it basically corresponds to the generalizations that you have in the literature and in the inequality book I mentioned in the beginning. Here, don't think about it that we have done it from 75 every five years up to 2015. I mean, that's really just sort of the background work here. But focus on the last row, the row named 2015. So there is the genie, 80.2. And then as you look at that, 80.2, and then look at the poverty line number. So in 2015, growing subsidizing incomes anywhere below the 80% decide of the global distribution would lower global inequality. So give money to anyone who does not belong to the top 20 in the world would improve inequality measures, this inequality measure, this genie coefficient. But only subsidizing the bottom 10% would reduce poverty as well. I mean, hey, wait a second. Wow, stop a second. Think about it. And to some extent, this actually speaks a little bit to an inherent question also related to this conference, right? Because this conference is sort of focusing on inequality. But then the question is, hey, we need to make sure we don't forget poverty in the mix. So the global, I mean, and this actually is quite important, the global economy can grow and become more equal while failing to reduce poverty. That's also an implication, because it all depends on where the changes are in our distributions. Here, these shows, all of the sorts for the different regions and so on, I don't have time to go through this. But here is sort of one that shows the subsequent Africa one, and I'm not going to go through the individual countries. But I'm going to make one key point is, look, the global proxy always higher, almost at the top 100. So what this basically means that giving money to anybody in Africa will tend to lower global inequality. There are very few who are sort of above the 100%, if you would push it that way. Then take the domestic one, which is sort of around the 80th, and then look at the spread of the poverty line. But the important point being that the poverty line is invariably below the domestic benchmark, which then leads to this thing that there are these different intervals where you're going to have different implications, either of income transfers or growth in the distribution for that respective part of the income earners. I have now been chasing my two colleagues, so I now have to make sure that I stop by 12. But I mean, I'm not going to try to sort of say, OK, we've done all these many countries and so on. Why we think this might be interesting? I mean, it is an attempt at trying to, as I said, link up these two liturgies. But I mean, one interesting thing is that this work just brings home how unequal the world actually remains. Increasing incomes of the bottom 80% anywhere will reduce the global inequality. I mean, just think about it. Now, what we're trying also to bring out these potentially important trade-offs, as I referred to, and let me now just use India as an example. I mean, the global benchmark income, according to the genie, is the 97th percentile while the domestic benchmark is the 73rd. So what is it that we would like to focus on? I mean, some people might here say, hey, wait a second. You're forgetting the elephant chart. You're forgetting this fact that at the 80s, they had almost no income growth, and that led to political upheavals and so on and so forth. We're not speaking about that. I realize that policymakers will have to think about that. But if they do that and say, hey, I probably need to think about the people who are somewhere between the 50s and the 75th, because if I don't keep them happy, I'm going to have a revolution. I mean, that might be one concern a prime minister or whatever a president might have. But then you should know that then it's happening on the back of the poorest. I mean, it's this kind of thing that I think is lying here. And now, I should say, I have focused here on relative measures, the genie. But we have gone through all of the different types, including the absolute measures. And I mean, the sort of comforting thing is that while they often disagree about the inequality trends, when it comes to these differences that I have referred to in terms of benchmarks, they're kind of quite similar. Yeah, let me just say here, if you think about the SDGs, OK, SDG1 leaving no one behind, what would that be? Well, that would be making absolutely sure that you focus all of your attention on the ones that are below the poverty line. But then some of the inequality discussions related to the SDG10, they're not formulated quite that way. Their actually success could sometime imply ignoring SDG1, strictly according to that goal. And it's sort of this which I kind of thought was very interesting to try to bring out. And one thing compared, and this would be my final words, compared to the poverty literature. I mean, we're having a lot of discussions and issues related to poverty lines, right? I mean, some people will say, oh, they are arbitrary. We don't quite understand them. They're very susceptible to price changes, et cetera, et cetera. And this is something that we struggled with in the poverty literature. Here, to some extent, you can say, this is, I don't know whether I want to say cleaner, but once you have chosen your inequality measure, then you can't disagree down the road on the benchmark income. And that is kind of interesting. And I'm not suggesting that this is the only way to approach this or whatever. I mean, that's another lesson from my 50 years is never think that you have the only key to understanding. Never think that you have the only way to think about a topic. Think about what you do as one element in a toolbox that hopefully can be helpful to policymakers. Thank you very much. I think I stayed within my time.