Inequality gap grows in Asia, United States.

• Author: Herro, Alana
• Position: EYE ON EARTH

In a new study, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reports that the gap between rich and poor in many Asian countries, particularly China, has grown significantly in recent decades as economies have boomed. The United States is struggling with the same challenge as new technologies such as the Internet converge with more speculative economic markets, bolstering the "super-rich," according to the U.K.'s Observer.

Although poverty rates in Asia are declining and inequality rates in the region are lower than in parts of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, 15 of the 21 countries the ADB surveyed experienced a proportionate widening in people's incomes since the early 1990s. Among the worst affected were Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In only six countries did relative income inequality narrow over this period. Meanwhile, "absolute" inequality--the actual dollar differences in incomes--increased almost everywhere in Asia between the 1990s and 2000s.

The ADB attributes the widening divide to urban-dominated economic growth, which has fueled high levels of migration to cities; to a dearth of foreign investment in rural areas; and to large differences in educational access between the wealthy and the poor.

In the United States, meanwhile, the number of "severely poor" people--those living at or below half the poverty level--is at a 32-year high, according to The Observer. Yet in 2005, an estimated 227,000 new U.S...