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As the year ends, New Zealand has done well in important global measures of success. But closer to home, the numbers often told a different story.
A lone jogger runs during a heat wave in the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area in Los Angeles on June 17, 2021.
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Southern California is on the front line of climate change, and recent survey data shows that residents are feeling its effects in many ways.
Women are more likely to work in sectors hit hard by the pandemic, like hospitality.
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The pandemic has increased vulnerability and poverty for female-headed households more than for male-headed households.
Visitors take photos near a model of the doll Younghee featured in ‘Squid Game,’ displayed at the Olympic park in Seoul, South Korea, on Oct. 26, 2021.
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Squid Game alludes to anti-worker violence that has permeated South Korean labour history, and reminds viewers of the need to overcome real inequalities.
Inequality within countries is growing globally
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Ghanaian postcolonial intellectuals viewed terms such as development, neo-colonialism, self-reliance, and indigeneity as central to discussions of global inequalities.
In the 1970s, Britain briefly achieved peak equality.
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Britain’s economic system is built on inequality. Few governments have attempted to rectify this.
UK energy systems are increasingly going digital.
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Many vulnerable people are unable to engage with their energy usage online, leading to higher bills and even debt and illness.
Smart cities promise a shining future, but without deliberate efforts to include underserved communities they can worsen the digital divide.
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Smart cities’ focus on technology has made the digital divide worse, not better. The new infrastructure law could change that.
The Lagos State government recently approved some private health facilities to administer COVID-19 vaccines in the state.
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Properly engaged and monitored, Nigeria’s private sector can do more in COVID vaccination exercise.
Closing the digital divide requires deploying a lot of fiber-optic cables in rural and low-income areas.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act designates broadband internet access as an essential service and targets billions of dollars to close the digital divide.
An empty school classroom in Uganda.
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School closures have immediate and long-term effects on students, both emotionally and economically. They will also have a ripple effect on a country and on income inequality.
Aging U.S. infrastructure: Rust on the underside of the Norwalk River Railroad Bridge, built in 1896 in Norwalk, Conn., and scheduled for replacement starting in 2022.
AP Photo/Susan Haigh
What will the US$1.2 trillion infrastructure bill pay for? Here are some of the things it will help build, fix or remove.
African countries have faced dangerous droughts, storms and heat waves while contributing little to climate change.
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Climate justice is about both where emissions come from and who suffers the consequences.
As more normalcy returns to schools, will arts education programs rebound?
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Even before the pandemic, access to arts programs and qualified instructors varied greatly among schools and districts.
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Just like in real life, the idea that everyone in the game has a fair shot is quickly exposed as a fallacy.
Braamfontein in central Johannesburg has benefited from the city’s urban renewal programme in recent times.
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The city’s government wanted the wealthy and overwhelmingly white areas of the city to subsidise the development of the poor and overwhelmingly black areas.
Less than half the population of sub-Saharan Africa had access to electricity in 2019.
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Major international donors, including the US and UK, are pledging to stop funding fossil fuel projects overseas, but they aren’t making the equivalent cuts at home.
Food is prepared by a South African non-profit to feed over 87 000 people in underprivileged communities at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Cape Town in 2020.
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Across the country, South Africans were stepping up to support one another in ways we have rarely seen.
A small-scale farmer in Soweto, South Africa.
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Most farmers experienced reduced demand and lower prices for their produce. There were also disruptions to production.
Bag sellers at Kumasi market in Ghana. Over 80% of workers on the continent work in the informal sector.
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While inequality is a global problem, its growth is most pronounced and the political, social and economic challenges it poses are most complex and pronounced in the global South.