CAPITALISM

Guardian: The lost decade
They were promised a brighter future, but in the 1990s the world's poor fell further behind

Taking issue with those who have argued that the "tough love" policies of the past two decades have spawned the growth of a new global middle class, the report says the world became ever more divided between the super-rich and the desperately poor.

The richest 1% of the world's population (around 60 million) now receive as much income as the poorest 57%, while the income of the richest 25 million Americans is the equivalent of that of almost 2 billion of the world's poorest people. In 1820 western Europe's per capita income was three times that of Africa's; by the 90s it was more than 13 times as high.

The poster children of the 1990s are among those who didn't do terribly well," he said. "There are structural restraints on development. Market reforms are not enough. You can't just liberalise; you need an interventionist strategy."

Economic growth alone would not rescue the world from poverty, the report said. "Without addressing issues like malnutrition and illiteracy that are both causes and symptoms of poverty, the goals will not be met.