Falling behind and falling apart – life at the bottom of the heap in the lucky country.

I pinched part of the title for this article from a book by Oxford economics professor, Paul Collier. The book “The Bottom Billion - why the poorest countries are falling apart and what can be done about it” makes the point that, up until the last decade or so, nearly five out of the world 6 billion people lived in developing countries with high levels of poverty. However the situation today is very different. Global poverty has fallen rapidly for every country except for the bottom 50 or so failing states where the world’s bottom billion “face a tragedy that is growing inexorably worse” and none of current approaches to development aid appear to make any difference.