Another important characteristic of the informational economy, of particular importance to issues of social inclusion, is its association with global economic stratification, both within and across countries. Both the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme have found a sharp rise in global inequality among countries over the past forty years. The World Bank, for example, has analyzed the gap between the richest twenty countries and the poorest twenty countries over the past forty years (World Development Report 2000/01). In 1960 per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was eighteen times that in the poorest twenty countries. By 1995, however, this gap had widened to thirty-seven times as the richest countries became much richer while the poorest countries stayed poor or became even poorer. The United Nations Development Programme (1999b) compared the GDP of the 20% of the world’s people who live in the richest countries with the 20% of the world’s people who live in the poorest countries. They found that the ratio between the two groups’ GDP increased from 30 to 1 in 1960, to 60 to 1 in 1990, to 74 to 1 in 1997. By 1997, the fifth of the world’s people living in the highest-income countries controlled 86% of world GDP, and the bottom fifth just 1%. This corresponds to the shares of exports of goods and services received by the richest and poorest fifths and to the even sharper disparity in shares of Internet users.
Digital World, Economic Growth and Technological Advancement
