ABSTRACT
During the first two decades of neo-liberalism (1980-98), the median per capita income of the developing countries stagnated at a growth rate of 0 per cent (Easterly 2001). The arithmetical average was pushed up by China, Southeast Asia and India, but there was also a slowdown of economic expansion in the wealthier member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Failing to find any obvious answer in a comprehensive statistical exercise and, as a good World Bank economist not about to blame the free market, Easterly suggested that the gap between rich and poor, which narrowed in the 1960-80 period, had returned to its historical – perhaps he meant structural – pattern. In addition, inequalities in many countries have widened in the same two recent decades and, as we saw in Chapter 8, the incomes of many farmers who had survived the crisis years did not improve.
