From the Commission on Growth and Development’s recent report, courtesy of Martin Wolf’s column in the FT:
1) The global economy is growing fast, and with it average living standards.
2) East Asia’s performance has been spectacular – living standards rose 10-fold between 1960 and 2004 – and even in Africa living standards doubled.
3) The poverty rate has plummetted in East Asia. Despite India’s recent success, its poverty rate is higher than in Sub-Saharan Africa.
4) Nearly all of the extra 2 billion people who are expected to add to the world’s population over the next 30 years will be in urban areas in poorer countries.
One can draw all sorts of interesting conclusions from this. From a migration perspective, it seems clear that people are inexorably moving from the countryside to the cities – and that this is an essential part of development.