THE chasm between the rich and poor is becoming ever more difficult to cross,
according to a bleak new assessment of global income trends. While the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer, the middle classes are disappearing like never
before, says Branko Milanovic of the World Bank. With an increasingly slender
link between the two extremes, society is bound to become more unstable.
Milanovic’s study is the first to investigate the worldwide distribution of
household incomes. Unlike previous studies that have compared the average
incomes of whole nations, the new study reveals the huge disparities that can
exist…
