ABSTRACT
It would be nice, given the long war on global poverty in the second half of the twentieth century, and the political rhetoric from G-8 leaders in their 2008 summit regarding the need for poverty alleviation, if we could say something unequivocal about poverty and inequality having been reduced at the end of the twentieth century. Many have, in fact, done so. Johan Norberg, for example, in his book In Defense of Global Capitalism (2003), claims that the countries of the world are getting more and more equal, and that the claim of growing inequality under global capitalism is ‘just wrong’ (p. 274). Martin Wolf, of the Financial Times, states ‘[g]lobalization has not increased inequality. It has reduced it, just as it has reduced the incidence of poverty’ (Wolf 2004: 184). Unfortunately, to use Norberg’s expression, both claims are ‘just wrong’—in fact, based unequivocally on ideology rather than empirical evidence, which, as we show below, contradicts such assertions.
