The most substantial declines have taken place in the former USSR and Eastern Europe. One third of children aged five are underweight and more than a third of the population are not expected to reach the age of 40. While masses of people eke out an existence without basic social infrastructure, mergers and acquisitions have concentrated vast resources in the hands of a few transnational corporations. As a result of this concentration of resources, the world's poor benefit little from increasing technology and knowledge. Just 10 countries account for 84 percent of global research and development expenditures and control 95 percent of US patents.
Research is ever more determined by profit as opposed to social needs.
Increased trade, new technologies, foreign investment and expanding communications networks are not evenly or fairly distributed on a world scale. The East Asian financial turmoil of 1997-99 resulted in capital outflows equivalent to 11 percent of the GDP of Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. The human impact included the loss of 13 million jobs across the region and a decline of real wages of between 40-60 percent in Indonesia. Job insecurity is not confined to the crisis-stricken regions of the globe. Global competition has undermined legal protection for jobs all over the world, and millions work with no contracts whatsoever.