Exploring an extreme wealth line

Researchers from LSE are collaborating with civil society partners in the Extreme Wealth Line Initiative to explore the viability of an Extreme Wealth Line: a counterpart to the more established extreme poverty line.

Extreme wealth concentration is under the microscope as societies around the world grapple with the challenges of inequality, climate breakdown and democratic backsliding. Yet wealth concentration continues to deepen, with some predictions that we will see the world’s first trillionaires within a decade.

The Extreme Wealth Line Initiative, coordinated by Patriotic Millionaires International, aims to introduce in the academic and public realm an measure that will have a similar function as the World Bank’s extreme poverty line. Instead of measuring how much money one needs to have in order to escape extreme poverty (and hence a line no person should fall below), the Extreme Wealth Line is a line where one has too much.

Yet many questions need research and debate even if we accept the moral intuition behind an "extreme wealth line", in order to set a line at a concrete level. For example, should we draw the line based on the social and environmental harms caused, or community expectations? Can we have just one line or do we need multiple lines depending on harms and contexts?