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Article: Rich man, poor man: inequality is the economic curse of our time. Never has the world been richer, but never has that wealth been more unevenly distributed.(Geographical dossier)
- Article from:
- Geographical
- Article date:
- September 1, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Circle Publishing Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Estimates by Branko Milanovic of the World Bank, published recently in the Economic Journal, showed that the richest one per cent of the world's population, about 60 million people, have as much income as the poorest $7 per cent, some 3.4 billion people.
In one of the most commonly used definitions of what it is to be poor, 20 per cent of the world's people, 1.2 billion of them, exist on less than one US dollar a day. A further two billion are officially classified as 'in poverty'. The richest fifth of the world's population, meanwhile, receives 86 per cent of global income.
Economic development and globalisation have gone hand in hand with a sharp ...