Study: Globalization Has Reduced World Poverty

Far from creating poverty as critics claim, rapid globalization of the world economy has sliced the proportion of abject poor across the planet, according to a controversial study to be released today.

It says that freer commerce, epitomized by the cutting of tariffs and the lifting of trade barriers, has boosted economic growth and lifted the incomes of rich and poor alike.

“The proportion of the world’s population in absolute poverty is now lower than it has ever been,” the study, written by a group of respected economists for the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research, says.

While accepting that there are costs to globalization that require robust policy making, the study seeks to refute the claims of anti-globalization campaigners that Western-dominated capitalism has damaged the world’s poor in the name of profits for large, multinational and mainly U.S. companies.

The study has already brought a less-than-glowing response from the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body that commissioned the report.

In a foreword that broadly endorses the report’s conclusions, commission President Romano Prodi distances the commission from some parts of the report, saying it could not concur with all the study’s analysis.