ABSTRACT
The enormity and persistence of the per capita income gap between rich and poor countries is the subject of this selection by David Morawetz. He shows, using data gathered by the World Bank, that there are two gaps, the relative and the absolute. Although some areas of the world (China, East Asia and the Middle East) have narrowed the relative gap in the 1950–75 period, others have seen it widen. For the developing countries as a whole, per capita income was only 7.6 percent of the per capita income of the industrialized nations. Even more distressing is the finding that only one country, Libya, was able to narrow the absolute gap during the twenty-five years of post-World War II development covered in this study, and that it will take anywhere from several hundred to over three thousand years for developing countries to close the gap at present growth rates. Morawetz concludes by arguing that closing the relative and absolute gaps may be a goal that is neither attainable nor desirable.
