This series of World Bank Briefing Papers looks at how to define globalization and then assesses three leading questions about globalization by looking at the evidence from a large number of countries.
Globalization is one of the most charged issues of the day.
It is everywhere in public discourse in TV sound bites and slogans on placards, in web-sites and learned journals, in parliaments, corporate boardrooms and labor meeting halls. Extreme opponents charge it with impoverishing the world's poor, enriching the rich and devastating the environment, while fervent supporters see it as a high-speed elevator to universal peace and prosperity. Progress on poverty reduction over the last decade was troublingly slow. Because the population of developing countries rose over this period, the proportion of the population living in poverty the poverty rate fell a little more quickly, from 29 percent to 24 percent. Poverty reduction performance was also extremely uneven.