Surprisingly, one tenth of the more than 1 billion people living in poverty are found in the world's richest countries; 16.5 percent of Americans, for example, live below the poverty line. "These reports are what the United Nations does best," says TIME correspondent Marguerite Michaels. "They're thorough studies that remind us there's still a lot of work to be done."
The Wealth (and Poverty) of Nations
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NEW YORK: Cheer up, all you Marxists. Communism may have collapsed, but you
were right about one thing: The rich are still getting richer and the poor
are still getting shortchanged. The United Nations Human Development Report released
Wednesday found that while annual worldwide consumption of goods and
services has
reached a staggering $24 trillion, the rising tide is floating fewer and fewer
boats. Fully 86 percent of those goods and services were consumed by the
richest 20 percent of the
earth's population, leaving the other 80 percent to fight over the rest.