ABSTRACT
Today the vast majority of the world’s population has a smaller share of global income that at any previous stage in history. The high income countries (those with a per capita income of more than $6,000 in 1988) account for over 80 per cent of the world’s income, yet they contained only 16.6 per cent of its population. At the other end of the spectrum nearly 61 per cent of the world’s population (with incomes averaging $545 or less) has to make do with a mere 5.6 per cent of global income (World Bank 1990; Aldcroft 1991).
