GLOBAL POVERTY & INCOME INEQUALITY ARE DROPPING LIKE STONES! That’s what this article from Business Week (courtesy of reader Todd Bass) says:

Critics of globalization say free trade and cross-border investment have benefited the rich at the expense of the poor. They argue that the ranks of the poor are growing, and that the disparity between rich and poor has grown.

The truth is more cheerful, says Xavier Sala-i-Martin, an economist at Columbia University. He calculates that the fraction of the world’s population below the poverty line (defined as an income of $2 a day in constant 1985 dollars) fell to 19% in 1998 from 41% in 1970 (chart).

Overall inequality has decreased as well. One way economists measure inequality is by the Gini coefficient, a zero-to-one scale on which zero means each person in the world has the same income and one means that a single individual collects the world’s entire income. Sala-i-Martin estimates the world’s Gini coefficient fell to 0.63 in 1998 from 0.66 in 1970.

Rising incomes since 1980 in China and India, the world’s most populous nations, account for most of the improvement. In contrast, poverty worsened in Africa. In 1970, 11% of the world’s poor were in Africa and 76% were in Asia. By 1998, Africa’s share of the poor had risen to 66% and Asia’s had fallen to 15%.

Hmm. Could this be because Asia has become more capitalism-friendly, while Africa remains mostly in the hands of faux-socialist kleptocracies?