Developing world's rise heralds global shift - UN
MEXICO: The developing world's rapid growth has sharply cut extreme
poverty, created a new middle class and put the economies of Brazil,
China and India on a path to overtake the globe's wealthiest nations,
the UN said Thursday.
Although developing nations are now driving economic growth, a lack
of action on climate change and persistent inequalities could threaten
those gains, the United Nations Development Programme said in a study.
The report sees a "dramatic rebalancing of global economic power" and
forecasts that the combined economic output of Brazil, China and India
will surpass that of the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany
and Italy by 2020.
The most striking changes had occurred in the southern hemisphere, a
region which had seen "unprecedented" rises in living standards, said
the study, titled "The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse
World." "Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so
many people changed so dramatically and so fast," said the report
presented in Mexico City.
China and India doubled their per capita economic output in less than
20 years, a rate twice as fast as Europe and North America experienced
during the Industrial Revolution.
The proportion of people living in extreme poverty worldwide fell
from 43 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008, with more than 500,000
million people rising above the poverty line in China alone.
The share of people living on less than $1.25 per day has been cut in
half, meeting one of the main targets of the Millennium Development
Goals.
The southern hemisphere's share of the global middle class grew from
26 percent to 58 percent between 1990 and 2010. By 2030, more than 80
percent of the world's middle class will live south of the Equator, the
report said.
"The Industrial Revolution was a story of perhaps a hundred million
people, but this is a story about billions of people," said Khalid Malik,
the report's lead author.
But the developing world faces similar long-term challenges as the
leading industrialized nations, from an aging population to
environmental pressures and social inequalities.
AFP
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