Dodgy statistics lend nothing to solving world inequalities

Of the developing world's 4.8 billion people, two-thirds live in countries that have achieved faster growth rates in GDP per head than the United States since 1973.

Further evidence that global inequality has been decreasing is presented in the essay on global income distribution in the centenary edition of the Australian Treasury's Economic Roundup.

James Wolfensohn either does not know or does not care about this evidence. In the foreword to the latest World Development Report, he claims that "widening global disparities have increased the sense of deprivation and injustice for many".

Highlights from the 2001 edition of World Development Indicators, now available on the Bank's web site, include the rhetorical question "How do we bridge these huge and growing income gaps?" and the claim that "For most of the second half of the 20th century, growth was slowing, in both high-income and developing countries."

In fact, growth has been accelerating in the most populous developing countries. Two-thirds of the population of the developing world lives in countries which enjoyed higher per capita growth rates in the final quarter of the century than in the so-called "golden age" between 1950 and 1973. And, as World Development Indicators shows, over three-quarters of the population of the developing world lives in countries which achieved faster growth in the 1990s than in the 1980s.

Wolfensohn knows the power of the internet to influence opinion. As he has put it, the internet "allows you to hit people with information or disinformation globally". And in his address at the annual meetings in Prague, he saw the information and communications revolution as offering "an unprecedented opportunity to make empowerment and participation a reality The village elder or the aspiring student will have access to the same information as the finance minister".

But will it be sound information? On May 19, the World Bank announced that its Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics in Europe had been suspended in the face of threats from anti-capitalist groups. The meeting, at which 200 World Bank officials and academics had planned to discuss strategies for poverty reduction, was to have commenced in Barcelona on Monday.

So the movement that Wolfensohn sees as stimulating awareness of global problems has succeeded in preventing free discussion of plans for attacking the most chronic problem of all. If current trends continue, there's every reason to fear that not only village elders and aspiring students, but also ministers in national governments, will be poorly informed about the world's problems.