How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor?
According to the IMF the world economy shrunk by 0.6% during 2009, per capita income fell about 2% to $10,500, and global unemployment reached 9%. Nevertheless, the world still appears to be on track to halve the 1990 poverty rate (except in sub-Saharan Africa) by 2015. If the crisis and recession had not occurred, the world economy might have been 7% larger and 90 million people might not have fallen into extreme poverty by the end of 2010. The IMF estimates a 4.2% growth in 2010. Much of this recovery is led by the developing world, with expected growth of 6.3% in 2010 and 6.6% in 2011–13, compared with growth in advanced economies at 2.3% and 2.4% in those years. The contribution of BRIC to world GDP in 2009 was over 23.5%, while a growing middle-class in developing countries opens new markets. By 2015, the IMF expects unemployment to be 6.2% in advanced economies and 5.4% in emerging and developing economies. The World Bank estimates that the number of people living on less than $1
