Top economists call for action on runaway global inequality

Gulf between rich and poor increases risk of climate breakdown as well as entrenches poverty, says letter to UN and World Bank

Failure to tackle the widening gulf between the world's rich and poor will entrench poverty and increase the risk of climate breakdown, a group of more than 200 leading economists have said.

In a letter to the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, and the World Bank president, Ajay Banga, the signatories from 67 countries call on the two bodies to do more to reverse the sharpest increase in global inequality since the second world war.