Human Rights and Economic Inequalities

Economic inequalities are among the greatest human rights challenges the world faces today due to the past four decades of neoliberal policy dominance. Globally, there are now over 2,000 billionaires, while 3.4 billion people live below the poverty line of US $5.50 per day. Many human rights scholars and practitioners read these statistics with alarm, asking what impact such extreme inequalities have on realizing human rights and what role, if any, should human rights have in challenging them? This edited volume examines these questions from multiple disciplinary perspectives, seeking to uncover the relationships between human rights and economic inequalities, and the barriers and pathways to greater economic equality and full enjoyment of human rights for all. The volume is a unique contribution to the emerging literature on human rights and economic inequality, as it is interdisciplinary, global in reach and extends to several under-researched areas in the field.

Gillian MacNaughton, JD, DPhil, is Associate Professor of Human Rights at the University of Massachusetts Boston, co-editor of Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and co-founder of the Collaborative Research Network on Economic and Social Rights in the Law and Society Association.

Diane F. Frey, PhD, is a lecturer in Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University, co-editor of Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World (Cambridge University Press 2018), and co-founder of the Collaborative Research Network on Economic and Social Rights in the Law and Society Association.

Catherine Porter is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics, Lancaster University, UK. She has provided policy advice to the UK and Ethiopian Governments, the United Nations (UNICEF, UNDP) and the World Bank. Her latest project examines the unequal impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic in low income countries.