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Widening gaps between rich and poor since the early 19th century

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The world's 200 richest people are getting richer—fast

Net worth of the 200 richest people

The new Human Development Report focuses on globalization

For nearly two centuries the rich have been getting richer and the poor...have stayed about the same. This is one of many statistics highlighted in the 1999 Human Development Report issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The report, published annually for ten years now, is an attempt to quantify how the quality of life is improving—or declining—for people around the world. UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown describes the report series as the "crown jewel" of his organization.

The two charts on this page illustrate how great amounts of wealth have been flowing into fewer and fewer hands. The top graph shows that the distance between the richest and poorest country was about 3 to 1 in 1820, 35 to 1 in 1950, and 72 to 1 in 1992. The data used to create this graph indicates that the British of 1820 had incomes six times that of the Ethiopians of 1992.

The lower chart shows a drastic increase in wealth in just the last half of this decade for the world's richest people. The report indicates that the assets of the three richest individuals in the world are now equal to the gross national products of the 48 least-developed countries of the world.