News Release

August 22, 2002

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The Rich-Poor Gap In Human Well-Being Is Shrinking Worldwide
Per capita income measures don't capture huge gains in life expectancy, education and food supply

WASHINGTON -- World leaders meeting next week in Johannesburg, South Africa for the United Nations sponsored World Summit on Sustainable Development should embrace globalization because it is dramatically improving life for people around the globe. In the new Cato Institute study "The Globalization of Human Well-Being," independent scholar Indur M. Goklany argues that worldwide improvements in hunger, infant mortality, life expectancy, child labor, and access to safe water are especially benefiting poor countries.

Controversy surrounding globalization has focused on whether it exacerbates income inequality between the rich and the poor, but Goklany examines whether globalization is improving human well-being.

"For every indicator examined, regardless of whether the rich are richer and the poor poorer, gaps in human well-being between the rich countries and other income groups have for the most part shrunk over the past four decades," writes Goklany. For example, the infant mortality gap between rich and poor countries has been cut in half during the past 50 years.

Trends indicate that as countries become wealthier, human well-being gets better "with improvements coming most rapidly at the lowest levels of wealth," according to Goklany.

Further, Goklany argues that freer trade has enhanced food security and that deterioration in some human development indicators of certain countries is due to insufficient globalization.

"The Globalization of Human Well-Being"