population-weighted international inequality is now diminishing. The
Gini coefficient for weighted international inequality indeed dropped
by 10 percent between 1965 and 2000.^20 Second, a new “global
middle class” is currently emerging. According to the World Bank,
by 2030, the number of people in developing countries belonging to
this global middle class will go up from 400 million to 1.2 billion.^21
One of the benefits of globalization is to foster greater mobility
among workers. Taking advantage of this new international context,
migrant workers have made a growing contribution to economic
growth and development. In 2005, the remittances of these workers to
Third World countries amounted to more than $160 billion, thereby
becoming a source of development financing much more important
than foreign aid. Remittances have the added advantage of being more
stable than aid flows, as they do not depend on the state of public
finances in the migrant workers’ host countries.^22 Qualified workers
living abroad furthermore play a crucial role in the economic and
social transformation of their countries of origin. Expatriate Indian
professionals, for example, are the primary wellsprings of knowledge
and capital flows toward India. In Taiwan, half the companies located
in the country’s largest research park were founded by workers who
had spent time in the United States.^23
The recent evolution of the international economy owes much to
the consensus that gradually crystallized through the 1980s in favor of
market liberalization and globalization. Up to that point, the eco-
nomic policies of the developing and socialist countries were by and
large interventionist, protectionist, and bureaucratic. Unable to satisfy
the rising aspirations of their populations and meet the challenges of
international competition, that approach was finally shelved and
replaced by a new one focused on private enterprise, the opening of
borders, and fiscal discipline. The collapse of communism in 1989,
(^20) Branko Milanovic,Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global
21 Inequality, Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 85.
World Bank,Global Economic Prospects 2007: Managing the Next Wave of
22 Globalization, Washington, DC, World Bank, 2007, p. xvi.
Dilip Ratha, “Remittances: A Lifeline for Development,”Finance and
Development, vol. 42, no. 4, December 2005 (www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/
fandd/2005/12/basics.htm).
(^23) Mario Cervantes and Dominique Guellec, “The Brain Drain: Old Myths, New
Realities,”OECD Observer, no. 231–32, May 2002 (www.oecdobserver.org/
news/fullstory.php/aid/673/The_brain_drain:_Old_myths,_new_realities.html).
62 Left and Right in Global Politics