NYT: The Rich Get Rich and Poor Get Poorer. Or Do They?

Virginia Postrel quotes work of Sala-i-Martin, an economist at Columbia in this article on New York Times:

"Over the last three decades, and especially since the 1980's, the world's two largest countries, China and India, have raced ahead economically. So have other Asian countries with relatively large populations.

The result is that 2.5 billion people have seen their standards of living rise toward those of the billion people in the already developed countries — decreasing global poverty and increasing global equality. From the point of view of individuals, economic liberalization has been a huge success."

I am no economist, so can't comment much, but I found one thing disturbing. This article would not have materialised if not for research by Sala-i-Martin and other people and still we don't find links to Sala-I-Martin's website (Wow, What a site he has ?). Also, Check out the following article from Robert Barro in Business Week Online published on 6th May 2002. Doesn't these two articles look similar. And while Robert Barro remained unnoticed, Virginia Postrel got a whole lot of not so deserving appreciation because of huge readership of NYT and also by the fact that her article got talked about in the blog circles and that she herself maintains a blog.

Related Links:
http://www.financialexpress.com/columnists/full_column.php?content_id=9012
http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/papers/GlobalIncomeInequality.htm