Debunking the first and third world divide

[Spin Echo]

link

I figured we needed something to counteract all the gloom and doom around N&P lately. A video showing that instead of the first world and the third world growing apart in terms of income and health care, they are actually converging.

[Ryan Thunder]

I'm assuming that this is because the Third World is getting stronger, not because the First World is going into the shitter, right?

Because the gloomers could probably find some way to say its just the second one.

[K. A. Pital]

There's a great progress in healthcare. Clearly the industrialization raises life expectancy. It was sad to see Russia fall down from the industrialized nations in the 90s on the table...

But the economic stats only deal with absolute poverty (less than $1 per year) and use a log scale - the rich nations got more rich than the poor ones - i.e. the disparity grew despite all nations are getting richer.

After all, the primary engine behind growth is industrialization and as more and more countries enter the industrial economy as opposed to an agrarian one, more will become rich indeed.

However, the question are the tempoes, which differ greatly between first world and auxillaries and the rest of the world.

Rich are getting richer faster than poor are climbing out of poverty.