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SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

Reduce inequality within and among countries
SDG Goal

SDG 10 aims to reduce inequality within and among countries. Despite global economic growth, income inequality and disparities in access to resources and opportunities continue to affect marginalized and vulnerable populations.

How engineering can make it happen

Through sustainable infrastructure and new technologies and innovations, engineers and engineering create jobs and opportunities, enabling access to housing, food, health, and a decent living, all of which are crucial to reducing inequalities. Ensuring access to low-cost communications and mobile phones, information and education, medical diagnostics and treatment, especially in low-income countries, is also essential to addressing basic needs. Technologies that empower women to increase their participation in the workforce and that address chronic gender-based economic inequalities are being developed by engineers.

Film courtesy of the Royal Academy of Engineers

Global progress

  • Since 2015, most countries have seen income and consumption growth for the bottom 40% of their population outpace the national average, though disparities persist among regions and countries at different income levels. The labour income share of GDP fails to show progress, contributing to rising inequality.
  • Reports of discrimination are rising globally, with higher prevalence among urban residents, women, persons with disabilities, the poorest, and those with lower education levels.
  • The global refugee population has surged to 37.8 million – primarily from Afghanistan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela – intensifying humanitarian pressures.
  • Total resource flows to developing countries have increased, with official development assistance (ODA) forming a larger share. Given current trends in international cooperation, however, the future of ODA appears uncertain and potentially constrained.
  • Getting Goal 10 back on track will require providing extra support for vulnerable population groups, combating rising discrimination, protecting labour income, and introducing structural reforms to boost growth in emerging and developing economies.

Source: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2025/

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