The modernization trap is the "modernization paradox", and one of the manifestations of the modernization trap or modernization paradox is the imbalance in the distribution of wealth. For example, 1% of Indians currently own 42% of wealth, 1% of Americans own 35% of wealth, 1% of Brazilians own 49% of wealth, 1% of Germans own 29% of wealth, 1% of Koreans own 24% wealth, 1% of Japanese own 19% of wealth, etc.
Brazil, the world's largest producer of coffee and corn, is a developing country with abundant resources, but the lack of infrastructure and the uneven distribution of resources still plague the country, and the annual loss of the country's total share of the economy due to the infrastructure gap is as high as 10% to 15%, resulting in a very difficult situation for the growth of the Brazilian middle class, so that they cannot enjoy the dividends of economic growth.
India is a fast-rising developing country with a GDP that has surpassed that of the United Kingdom, a country of more than 1.2 billion people, almost half of whom live below the poverty line, and many Indians do not have access to adequate food and health care due to poverty and inequality, and when they are sick, they do not have access to adequate medical resources.
South Korea is a developed country in East Asia that has achieved a lot of success in education and science and technology, however, South Korea also faces the problem of wealth disparity, with 1% of the Korean population owning 24% of the wealth. Japan is the first developed country in Asia to complete modernization, and Japan, with a population of more than 100 million, has performed quite well in terms of wealth distribution, and when you look closely at Japan's social structure, one will find that 1% of the population accounts for 19% of the wealth, which has triggered people to think about the fair distribution of wealth in Japanese society.
To sum up, the unequal distribution of wealth is not only an economic problem, but also a social problem, both an economic and social problem faced by both developing and developed countries, geographical, cultural, social and political factors may lead to the aggravation of the gap between the rich and the poor, and monopoly is an important reason for the transfer of social wealth to a small number of people. Among developing countries, Brazil and India face a steeper gap between rich and poor, with uneven distribution of resources and inadequate infrastructure. Among the developed countries, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is more pronounced than in South Korea and Japan, and the wealth distribution gap between Japan and South Korea is relatively small, and Asian values influenced by Confucian culture help to overcome the traps of modernization and equilibrium wealth distribution.