Davis

While we struggle with high unemployment in the United States and other developed nations, we can take some comfort in knowing the developing nations are still developing.

In the 11 years running from 1998 to 2009, the percentage of the worldÕs population living in low-income nations as defined by the World Bank fell from about 60 percent to about 12 percent. This was close to an 80 percent drop in only 11 years.

China, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Vietnam moved up from lower-income to lower-middle-income.

Ethiopia has a long way to go before it makes it to lower-middle-income status, but in the five-year period from 2004 to 2009, its per-person gross national income increased from 110 to 330 U.S. dollars a year.

The economies of very rich nations like the United States typically grow at 2 percent a year per person. In 2007, before the current recession, the developing nations as a whole were growing at just slightly less than 7 percent a year per person, 31Ú2 times our long-run rate.

So the gap between rich and poor nations is rapidly shrinking.

Poland was just declared a developed nation by the World Bank. An almost unbroken line of nations from Estonia in the north to Croatia in the south has now joined the developed world. Lithuania and a small triangle of land belonging to Russia between Lithuania and Poland are the only exceptions.

In the next 10 to 15 years, we may well see China, Russia, Mexico, Turkey and other less populous nations join the developed club. In 2008, about a billion people lived in the developed world. Ten to 15 years from now it might well be 3 billion.

So the developing nations are making rapid progress developing. That is great; it is their job.

Our job is to reinvent our high-income lifestyle so a rapidly rising portion of the worldÕs population can enjoy it without wrecking the environment. As they are doing their job very quickly, we will have to do ours very quickly as well.

Richard Bruce

Davis

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