Wealth and poverty: the search for a social model - 中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

Wealth and poverty: the search for a social model

Workshop presentation and general background

Authors: Ludo Horemans

Date: août 2007

Published by European Anti Poverty Network, Evens foundation

Workshop presentation and general background

While the new scientific and technical developments and then the globalisation of exchanges and the rapid growth of international trade have been very distinctive these last 50 years and have, at the global scale, produced a rapid increase in the average income per inhabitant, this growth has not equally benefited all peoples and all social classes.

Some have long defended that, at the nation level, these evolutions made the richest richer and made the poorest poorer. In reality, as the rapid development of China and India after that of other Asian countries moreover shows the « dematerialisation » of the economy, in which knowledge and know-how represent an increasingly important factor of production, and the globalisation of exchanges, with what this involves in the massive transfer of technologies, seems rather to be leading to a gradual reconciliation – whether it‟s judged as too fast or too slow is another story – of the technological and economic levels of most of the great regional groups, Africa excluded. On the other hand, this movement of levelling out is generally accompanied in each society by an increasingly greater differentiation between rich and poor, especially, as is the historic rule, in the initial stages of economic development.

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