FACTS AND FIGURES

• Globalisation has costs and benefits. There have been examples of poorly-managed globalisation (e.g. when countries opened their economic borders before they had the capacity to respond well) but there are also examples of well-managed engagement with the international community.

• 80% of the global population earns only 20% of global income, and within many countries there is a large gap between rich and poor.

• The 3 billion people living in the 24 developing countries that increased their integration into the world economy enjoyed an average 5% growth rate in income per capita, longer life expectancy and better schooling.

• Two billion people, living in countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union, have been unable to increase their integration into the world economy, and their economies have contracted, poverty has risen, and education levels have risen less rapidly than in the more globalised countries.

• A study of 72 developing economies found that since 1980 those economies which increased their ratio of trade to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew on average faster than those that did not. In the 1990s, these economies’ GDP grew an average 5% annually, up from 1.4% in the 1960s. These economies have been closing the gap between their income levels and those of the world’s rich economies. By contrast, economies that did not increase their exposure to international trade reduced their average annual growth from 3.3% in 1970s to 0.8% in the 1980s and 1.4% in the 1990s.

• Between 1993 and 1998, the number of people in absolute poverty in globalising developing economies declined by 14%. That amounts to approximately 107 million people no longer living in poverty.

• Wealth inequalities amongst developed economies more than halved between 1960 and 1995. By contrast, the same World Bank study found poverty in the less globalised developing economies rose by 4% between 1993 and 1998. That’s 17 million more people living in poverty in these economies.

• Between 1980 and 1998, the net effect of these diverging trends was a reduction in global poverty of around 200 million people. And it’s worth noting that these declines in world poverty took place when the world’s population was increasing by around 2 billion.

• Over the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, poor countries that were globalisers ‘outstripped’ not only non-globalising poor countries but also rich countries as well in terms of average GDP growth.

• Since 1950, world trade increased more than nineteen-fold, and world output has increased by six times ... yet in 2005, more than 800 million people do not have enough food to eat, more than 10 million children died before their fifth birthday, and more then 1 billion people are forced to survive on less than $1 a day. At the same time, oceans are over-fished, forests are destroyed at the greatest rate ever, species are going extinct at the greatest rate since the time of the dinosaurs and the air is polluted to such a degree that the Earth’s climate is actually changing.

• In Australia, over the period of 1960 to 1980, wages as a per cent of GDP rose from about 52% to over 60%, while corporate profits as a per cent of GDP remained mostly under 20%. Over the next 25 years to 2005 (the period of economic liberalisation) wages fell back to about 53% of GDP while corporate profits have sky-rocketed to over 27% of GDP.

• In Australia, between 1980 and 2000 (when the economy was being liberalised) economic growth slowed when compared to 1960-1980. GDP grew by 123% between 1960 and 1980 – over 30% faster than over the later two decades of economic liberalisation, when GDP grew by only 93%.

• Powerful countries, led by the USA and the European Union (EU), are pursuing regional and bilateral free trade agreements with unprecedented vigour ... around 25 developing countries have now signed free trade agreements with developed countries, and more than 100 are engaged in negotiations. An average of two bilateral investment treaties are signed every week. Rich countries are using these bilateral and regional ‘free trade agreements’ (FTAs) and investment treaties to win concessions that they are unable to obtain at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where developing countries can band together and hold out for more favourable rules.

• The global economy’s winners are the rich countries and the big multinational corporations – mostly based in the rich countries – which now almost completely control trade within and between nations. The world’s largest 500 corporations control over 70% of world trade.

• Global trade liberalisation allows corporations to relocate to countries with low wages and low labour and environmental standards. It allows them to manufacture products and to cheaply extract natural resources from poor countries without having to pay the costs which wages and environmental regulations demand.

• Between 1994 and 1998, the 200 richest people in the world more than doubled their net worth to more than $1 trillion. Meanwhile, disparities continue to grow: In 1960, the income gap between the richest fifth of the world’s population and the poorest fifth was 30 to 1; in 1997 it was 74 to 1.

• Cows in Europe get a subsidy from the taxpayer worth $2.20 a day at a time when half the world’s population – 3 billion people – scrapes by on an income of less than that.

• In 1980 Africa had a 6% share of world trade. By 2002 this had dropped to just 2% despite the fact that Africa has 12% of the world’s population. If Africa could regain just an additional 1% share of global trade, it would earn $70 billion more in exports each year – several times more than what the region receives in foreign aid.