The United Nations Development Program's annual Human Development Report is usually a pretty grim document. Sure, life is improving for most people, but the poorest seem to get poorer and the gap between haves and have-nots is continually widening. The richest 20 percent of the world's population has 86 percent of world GDP; the bottom fifth has only 1 percent. The rising tide of globalization may lift all boats, but the numbers tell a different story. In 1960, the income gap between the world's richest fifth and poorest fifth was 30 to 1; in 1997, the spread had reached 74 to 1.
This year's report differs from its predecessors in the attention it gives to the Internet and the impact of the wired world. It's not a pretty picture.
That top 20 percent also comprises 93.3 percent of the world's Internet users and 74 percent of its phone users. The United States has more computers than the rest of the world combined. Bulgaria, a country rarely mistaken for a cyberparadise, has more Internet hosts than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. South Asia, with 23 percent of the world's population, has less than 1 percent of the world's Netizens.