The catching-up of countries in the Global South to productivity levels and living standards of the Global North is the exception. There are two main economic explanations for this. First, developing countries are pushed to low-tech-labor-intensive productions and tasks in global value chains....

The majority of the world's poor, by income poverty and multi-dimensional poverty, now live in countries officially classified by the World Bank as middle-income countries. Of course nothing happens when a country crosses a (somewhat) arbitrary threshold in per capita income but it does matter...

What has happened to inequality between and within countries since 1990? In this paper we explore who have been the winners and losers from global growth since 1990. We find that falls in total global inequality in the last 30 years are predominantly attributable to rising prosperity in China....