Drastic inequality is by no means new in New York. Jacob A. Riis was called a muckraker after he chose to spotlight the city’s poverty at the turn of the 20th century by photographing it. Here: Sweatshop in Hester Street, 1889-1890. (Photo by Jacob A. Riis/Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roger William Riis)

Men play cricket in Kabul, Afghanistan, 16 September 2021. A humanitarian crisis and alleged widespread human rights violations are among the top challenges Afghanistan faces a month after the Taliban's lightning-fast capture of Kabul. The economic crisis threatened to push 97 percent of the 40 million people into poverty by mid-2022, the United Nations has warned. (Photo by EPA/EFE/Stringer)

In this January 16, 2019, file photo, a homeless man sleeps on a median strip in New Delhi, India. In India, some 270 million people – nearly 22 percent of the country's population – live in poverty, making giveaways particularly attractive to voters. The Modi government in its interim budget in January announced farmers would be paid 6,000 rupees ($85) annually, benefiting as many as 120 million households and income tax relief to the middle class. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo/File)

Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. Its population was estimated to be around 6.5 million in 2012. A third (33%) of the country's population lives below the international poverty line which means living on less than U.S. $1.25 per day.

In this April 18, 2019 photo, tattoo artist Lalo Calva inks a tattoo on client Adrian Alonso Rodriguez, a journalist, announcer and dubbing artist, at the Corona Tattoo parlor in Mexico City. Not only inks and techniques have changed in Mexico over the years, but tattoos themselves have evolved from stigmatized symbols of gangs, violence and poverty to an art form. (Photo by Marco Ugarte/AP Photo)

Soldiers from the Nigerian Armed Forces take position and secure the streets in Lagos Island, Lagos, on February 27, 2023, after hoodlums had harassed market owners. Nigeria slowly counted more results on Monday after a tight election for the presidency of Africa's most populous nation as delays and accusations of manipulation fuelled tensions Nearly 90 million were eligible to vote on Saturday for a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari, with many hoping for a new leader to tackle insecurity, economic malaise and widening poverty. (Photo by John Wessels/AFP Photo)

Santa Claus greets a child during a visit to residents of the slum of Petare in Caracas, Venezuela, December 11, 2016. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

A woman in yukata, casual summer kimono, poses for a photo at Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, Japan on October 2, 2019. (Photo by Matthew Childs/Reuters)