World prosperity 1

Last Friday's post included World Bank's chart of growing prosperity in the world's poorest countries. Global poverty has been shrinking for decades while the good metrics (education, nutrition, etc.) climb higher. 

Some might ask: is this just World Bank's self-serving interpretation? No, the global trend is widely reported. Just as an example, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is definitely on the other side of the political spectrum, but it reports the same global trend.

In 1992 the world's population was about 5.5 billion. Twenty-five years later it was about 7.5 billion. In spite of adding two billion additional people to the world, the number of extremely poor fell. How did that happen?

"The Industrial Revolution turned the once-impoverished western countries into abundant societies. The new age of globalization, which started around 1980, saw the developing world enter the global economy and resulted in the largest escape from poverty ever recorded."

Asean business networking

(cont'd tomorrow)