Library | ESG issues
Inequality
Inequality refers to disparities in income, wealth, and access to essential services such as healthcare, education, and economic opportunities. While some progress has been made, inequalities persist and deepen for vulnerable populations, including refugees, migrants, Indigenous peoples, older persons, people with disabilities, and children. These disparities hinder sustainable development, threaten social stability, and limit economic growth. Addressing inequality requires inclusive policies, equitable access to resources, and protections against discrimination and social exclusion.
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Energy transition index series
The Energy Transition Index is a benchmark series providing a structured, data-driven framework to assess national energy systems and track transition progress across 120 countries. It evaluates performance through security, equity, and sustainability lenses, alongside transition readiness factors, helping decision-makers identify gaps and understand the conditions required for resilience.
Old workers, young machines: Can AI and automation offset population ageing?
This report assesses the capacity of artificial intelligence and robots to automate ageing workforces across 135 economies. While automation could offset demographic pressures, its effectiveness is limited because ageing often occurs in sectors with low automation potential, such as health and agriculture, particularly in several fast-ageing advanced economies.
Just adaptation: An introduction for institutional investors
This report introduces institutional investors to 'just adaptation', highlighting the financial materiality of fair and equitable climate resilience. It outlines how incorporating social equity into adaptation strategies protects long-term returns, maintains social licence, and identifies priority actions for investors to support vulnerable communities while managing systemic climate risks.
Who funds and who pays: The funding of solar geoengineering, 2020–2025
This report examines the dramatic tenfold increase in solar geoengineering funding between 2020 and 2025. It highlights the dominance of US and UK tech billionaires and government agencies in financing research, raising concerns about transparency, democratic oversight, and the marginalisation of Global South interests in climate policy.
Atlas of Global Development 2026
An interactive data platform from the World Bank tracking 75 years of global progress across people, prosperity, planet, infrastructure, and digital themes.
Extending social protection coverage to workers in the agricultural sector and their families: Lessons from international experience
Report examines extending social protection to agricultural workers. Highlighting that rural areas account for more than three-quarters of the extreme poor, it identifies barriers like legal exclusion and informal employment. It presents international solutions, including flexible contribution schedules and mobile service delivery, to achieve universal coverage for rural populations.
Supporting just transitions through social protection: Key roles for philanthropy
This briefing paper explores how philanthropy can support just transitions to net zero through social protection. It examines the socio-economic risks of decarbonisation, identifies systemic coverage gaps, and highlights catalytic roles for philanthropic capital in capacity building, research, and policy alignment to ensure an inclusive transition.
Closing the gender health gap: The investment case and capturing Australia's window of opportunity
This report identifies the gender health gap as a systemic market failure and significant investment opportunity. Closing this gap could boost the global economy by US$1 trillion annually by 2040. In Australia, the opportunity is valued at US$24.8 billion per year, offering a time-limited ten-year window for investors.
Firm pay, amenities, and inequality
This research assesses firm-specific amenity valuations using discrete choice experiments linked to German administrative records. It finds that amenities widen between-firm inequality by 20% in variance terms. Furthermore, gender differences in valuations contribute to female sorting into lower-wage firms, as women prioritise non-wage attributes more highly.
Global employment trends for youth 2026: Back to the future
The Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026 report highlights a stalled post-pandemic recovery, with global youth unemployment reaching 12.4 per cent. It examines rising NEET rates, artificial intelligence impacts, and job experience inflation, while advocating for bold, adaptive policies to ensure secure, decent work pathways for young people.
The commoditization of labor
This research examines how technological standardisation commoditises labour by making workers interchangeable. It develops a model showing that while this process increases productivity, it simultaneously reduces worker bargaining power and wages. This framework explains the declining large-firm wage premium and the divergence between productivity and pay in services.
ICMA's guidance handbooks series
This guidance series provides a comprehensive set of questions and answers regarding the application of the Green Bond Principles, Social Bond Principles, Sustainability Bond Guidelines, and Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles. It serves as a benchmark series for the sustainable bond market, promoting transparency and standardisation across various financial debt instruments.
The price and distributional impact of flood risk disclosure: Evidence from US housing platforms
This research quantifies the impact of property-level flood risk disclosure on US housing prices and demographics. Homes labelled with 'extreme' risk saw a 3.3% price discount. Disclosure caused significant resorting, with lower-income, older, and FHA-financed buyers increasingly purchasing high-risk properties primarily due to reduced transaction prices.
Intentional Endowments Network (IEN)
IEN is a peer-learning network supporting endowments and foundations to integrate climate and social inequality considerations into investment strategies.
Understanding inequality as a macro-financial risk to markets and diversified portfolios
This research identifies economic inequality as a systemic macro-financial risk to markets. It examines how wealth concentration and market power destabilise economies, fuel social instability, and hinder progress on global challenges. The report advocates for new financial analysis tools and disclosure frameworks to integrate social-related risks into investment strategies.
Global report on food crises series
The Global Report on Food Crises is an annual benchmark series tracking acute food insecurity, malnutrition and forced displacement in countries facing food crises. Produced by FAO, WFP and the Global Network Against Food Crises, it delivers consensus-based, multi-agency analysis to guide humanitarian and development decision-making globally.
