According to Angus Maddison, the last millennium turned out well economically; world population increased twenty-two fold, per capita income, thirteen fold, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), three hundred fold. In 1000 AD, the average infant could expect to live to age twenty-four, today, to age sixty-six. In recent centuries, the most rapid growth has been in Western and Central Europe, North America and Japan, but in the last fifty years, a “Resurgent Asia” demonstrates that catch up is possible. Not all the news is good. Growth has been unequal. In the last eighty years, the gap between the richest regions and the rest of the world has grown; in 1820 it was 2:1, in 1998 7:1.