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First, it ignores changes within countries. Yes, China's average income grew. But not every Chinese got the average increase. We know that China became dramatically more unequal in the 1990s. (Fischer concedes this, incidentally; see my evidence here.) And it is possible to make a much broader statement. Looking over the broad range of developing countries, my University of Texas Inequality Project finds rising inequality in most of them, including India, and falling inequality in only a few.

Second, it is not reasonable to treat sub-Saharan Africa as apart from globalization. These countries have always been suppliers of minerals, rubber, oil, coffee and cocoa to the West, often under horrific conditions. (During the slave era they were, of course, great victims of that earlier wave of globalization.) They are not isolated now: Trade ratios in sub-Saharan Africa are not abnormally low. They are victims now of debt crises and so-called structural adjustment programs. To treat them as special cases is simply a way of evading globalization's greatest failures.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/22/economist/