ABSTRACT
The data on world development since the early 1980s leave little doubt that most MICs have hit constraints to growth that they have found difficult to overcome. After a period of strong growth, they appear to have settled into growth rates of per capita GDP which are mostly above zero but still much below the growth that they were able to generate between 1950 and 1980. Severe growth retardation set in around 1980 in Latin America and after the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 in some of the hitherto rapidly growing Asian economies, and the slowdown continues until the present.
