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A peek into the future: The world in 25 years

As the New Year approaches rapidly, we all wonder what 2007 will hold in store for the world. Always interested in discovering future trends and how to adapt current systems to them, the World Bank has gone one step further and found out what the next 25 years will bring us. The World Bank has identified the strongest and most important trends that have been shaping our past and researched how they will affect our future. The result of their efforts has been published in their latest Global Economic Prospects report, with some surprising findings.

Assuming that current trends will be stable a lot of people are set to become a lot richer in the next 25 years, with the global economy doubling in value in real terms. Incomes in east and south Asia, central and Eastern Europe will come exceedingly close to those of present high-income countries (measured in purchasing power). China is set to reach an average level of 42 percent of first-world income. On the other side of the coin is still Africa, which will become the primary poverty region as Asia will lift itself into Second World status. From now being home to 30 percent of the worlds poor more than every second poor person in the world will be living in Africa by 2025.

Another highlight in the next 25 years will be the definite victory of technology over labor, which means that unskilled workers will be even worse off in the future. As countries will seize their opportunities to apply new technology more efficiently, wages will rise. The bottom line of the report calls for more effort to be made to make sure that in the bright future ahead of us, no one will be left behind. And as the threat of a nuclear conflict keeps rising, making sure that there are no losers in the boom ahead of us seems more important than ever.