How Does the Global Order Harm the Poor?

More than 20 percent of the world population lives in abject poverty, on less than $1 per day, and about 50 percent on less than $2. Twenty-five percent is illiterate. The two-and-a-half billion people in low-income countries have an infant mortality rate of over one hundred for every thousand live births, compared to six in high-income countries. According to widely circulating statistics, the ratio between rich and poor has increased dramatically: in 1820, the ratio in average per capita incomes was three to one, in 1960 sixty to one, and in 1997 seventy-four to one. The contrast between lavishly rich North Americans whose urgent questions of the day are about where to go for dinner and when to meet one’s How Does the Global Order Harm the Poor? MATHIAS RISSE