losing control over
international flows of people, goods, funds, and technology. Internally,
the central government often finds its control over resources slipping
as separatist regional movements - typically based on ethnicity -
gain momentum, e.g., in many of the successor states of the former
Soviet Union, in the former Yugoslavia, in India, in Indonesia, and
in Canada. In Western Europe, governments face the difficult political
problem of channeling resources away from welfare programs in order to
increase investment and strengthen incentives to seek employment. The
addition of 80 million people each year to an already overcrowded globe is
exacerbating the problems of pollution, desertification, underemployment,
epidemics, and famine. Because of their own internal problems and
priorities, the industrialized countries devote insufficient resources
to deal effectively with the poorer areas of the world, which, at least
from the economic point of view, are becoming further marginalized. The
introduction of the euro as the common currency of much of Western
Europe in January 1999, while paving the way for an integrated economic
powerhouse, poses economic risks because of varying levels of income
and cultural and political differences among the participating nations.
The terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 accentuate a
further growing risk to global prosperity, illustrated, for example,
by the reallocation of resources away from investment to anti-terrorist
programs. (For specific economic developments in each country of the
world in 2001, see the individual country entries.)

GDP: GWP (gross world product) - purchasing power parity - $47 trillion
(2001 est.)

GDP - real growth rate: 2.2% (2001 est.)

GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $7,600 (2001 est.)

GDP - composition by sector: agriculture: 4% industry: 32% services: 64%
(2001 est.)

Household income or consumption by percentage share: lowest 10%: NA%
highest 10%: NA%

Inflation rate (consumer prices): developed countries 1% to 4% typically;
developing countries 5% to 60% typically (2001 est.); national inflation
rates vary widely in individual cases, from declining prices in Japan
to hyperinflation in several Third World countries

Labor force: NA

Labor force - by occupation: agriculture NA%, industry NA%, services NA%

Unemployment rate: 30% combined unemployment and underemployment in
many non-industrialized countries