ABSTRACT
During the next 30 years, the world's population is projected to increase by nearly half, to 9.5 billion people. Almost all of that increase will be in the world's poorest countries, countries that already suffer from a host of challenges and are poorly equipped to deal with them. The current period of rapid globalization, which began in the 1970s, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty; its effects have been highly unequally distributed. In 2005, the most recent date for which World Bank (2010) data are available, 1.4 billion people—more than a quarter of the population in the developing world—struggled to survive on less than $1.25 a day, the official World Bank poverty line. Global inequality has increased in recent decades—not only between countries, but within countries as well.
