Inequality traps detected in sustainable development goals data
Abstract
The relationship between inequality and the biosphere has been hypothesized to mutual dependecies and feedbacks. If that is true, such feedbacks may give rise to inequality regimes and potential tipping points between them. Here we explore synergies and trade-offs between inequality and biosphere-related sustainable development goals. We used the openly available SDG datasets by the World Bank (WB) and United Nations (UN) and applied ordination methods to distill interactions between economic inequality and the environmental impact across countries. Our results confirm the existence of inequality regimes, and we find preliminary evidence that corruption may be a candidate driver of tipping between regimes.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.16703,
title = {Inequality traps detected in sustainable development goals data},
author = {Juan C. Rocha and Maike Hamann and Jiangxiao Qiu and Tong Wu and Tomas Chaigneau and Emilie Lindkvist and Caroline Schill and Alon Shepon and Andrew R. Tilman and Geraldine D. Verkleij and Anne-Sophie Crépin and Carl Folke},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.16703},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
4 figures, 9 pages, 11 SM figures, 23 pages total