ICT Will Increase The Divergence Between Rich And Poor Countries

Information and communication technology (ICT) has brought unprecedented possibilities to start developing a catch-up process in developed countries to developed countries. It provides effective means of increasing productivity, helps to integrate the economy into the world market, provides better educational possibilities, and improves medical services. ICT accounts for half of modern economic productivity growth (Reding, 2005). Rich countries can certainly use ICTs more than poor countries; "the level of inequality in access to ICT remains twice the average income gap" (UNCTAD, 2005).

Available evidence suggests that there have been differences in income levels between countries and people rather than convergence over the past 25 years. As income disparities between wealthy and poor in the world's population, between rich and poor, and between wealthy and poor people expanded, economic inequality has expanded. In most of eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, the incidence of poverty under the age of 18 has increased in most countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Except for this, the incidence of poverty continues to decline in many countries in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. However, due to the recent financial crisis and economic crisis in Southeast Asia, this situation has deteriorated markedly.

This paper argues that the remarkable feature of modern economic relations is the phenomenal growth of the average income gap between wealthy countries and poor countries. It shows the difference between the growth rates of developed and developing countries and the internal convergence of the group of previous countries. This is an expansion of Stiglitz 2002 (see International Organization and Global Inequality), the asymmetric impact of international organizations on developed and developing countries, including the role of intellectual property in trade and the management of global financial markets I am arguing.

In today's era of globalization, world inequality has dramatically increased. The world's income and wealth varies greatly as assets are concentrated and managed in richer countries. The income disparity between one fifth of the world's wealthiest countries and the poorest fifth of the richest nation's population ranged from 60 to 1 in 1990, from 30 to 1.86 in 1960, 1997 It was from 74 to 1. Inequality in income and wealth, opportunities, power, results of development and poverty still exists. If they continue to fall into this globalization and exclusion trap, most least developed countries will not be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.