North-South divide

Geographical division of the world that theoretically demarcates the rich from the poor. The South includes all of Asia except Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, and the South East Asian ‘dragons’ of Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand; all of Africa; the Middle East, except the oil-rich UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain; and Central and South America. The North includes Europe; the USA, except Bermuda and the Bahamas; Canada; and the European republics of the former Soviet Union. Newly industrialized countries such as South Korea and Taiwan now have more in common with the industrialized North and fast-developing Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Chile than with other countries in the developing world.

The gulf between rich and poor is widening: in 1880 the average income of a European was twice that of an Indian or Chinese; by 1965 the ratio was 40:1; in 1995 it was 70:1. The richest 20% of the world's people had (1992) 150 times the income of the poorest 20%.