May 8, 2026
A version of this story was published on the GC Wealth Project site.
Stone Center Director Janet Gornick and GC Wealth Project Director Salvatore Morelli took part in a recent meeting of the International Panel on Inequality (IPI) Founding Committee, an international group of experts and government officials who are seeking to establish a permanent global panel to fight inequality.
The meeting, which took place from April 24 to Apil 25 in Johannesburg, brought together global inequality experts and country representatives at Wits University to advance the establishment of the panel. It was the second meeting of the founding committee of the IPI, which is modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and aims to monitor inequality trends, assess their drivers and consequences, and evaluate policy responses.
The creation of a new independent international panel was one of the key recommendations of the G20 Report on Global Inequality, commissioned by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and prepared by the Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, chaired by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. The report, which features ongoing work from the GC Wealth Project, stated that the world is facing an “inequality emergency” with far-reaching economic, social, and political consequences.
The Johannesburg meeting was the second of four steps in the roadmap leading toward the creation of the IPI. It focused on defining the panel’s work program, with contributions from academic experts and representatives of founding governments, including Brazil, Norway, South Africa, and Spain.
Morelli, who attended in person, participated in the meeting’s Working Group 1, where he focused on the scale and dimensions of inequality measurement. “Attending the meeting in Johannesburg reinforced my conviction that the response to inequality must be both global and local,” Morelli said. “We need international tools for analysis and advocacy — such as the IPI — but we also need national approaches capable of understanding specific contexts and developing appropriate solutions. The IPI will have a delicate and important work to do in creating consensus, among other things, around the concepts and empirical evidence on economic inequality around the world. I am hopeful that the work that we are doing at the GC Wealth Project between Rome and NYC can help shape the IPI’s future work agenda.”
Gornick has participated in discussions about the availability and quality of data utilized to study inequality, as well as conversations related to measurement practices. She attended the April meeting virtually. “We are very pleased that the GC CUNY Stone Center has been invited to contribute to the International Panel on Inequality, from its launch through later stages now being planned,” she said.
At the meeting, President Ramaphosa described inequality as a “threat to human freedoms and economic growth everywhere.” UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a video message, said “unequal outcomes today lock in unequal opportunities tomorrow — in education, in health care, in every aspect of life.”
Learn More:
- The GC Wealth Project
- “Inequality Can Be Reversed, Says Global Expert Panel,” by Wits University
- Internation Panel on Inequality (IPI): Video
- G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality: Summary and Full Report
