Shingo Miyazaki
Assistant Senior Researcher, 4th Research Department
There are various definitions of what constitutes poverty. According to statistics published by the World Bank in 2010, roughly 25% of the world’s population (approximately 6 billion people) are classed as poor (*1). There are large numbers of poor countries in Africa and Asia in particular, with the likes of Burundi and the Congo (formerly Zaire) in Africa and Myanmar and Nepal in Asia amongst the poorest countries in the world. There were 49 countries on the UN’s list of the poorest countries in the world in 2005, with one third of the world’s countries still struggling with poverty (*2).
In recent years however, we have started to see signs that income levels amongst the poor are gradually increasing in line with economic growth, particularly in emerging countries. According to the IMF, nominal GDP per capita in developing countries, including the world’s poorest countries, has increased by an average of 7% over the last five years, a growth rate that is almost three times as high as the same figure for advanced countries (2.4%). Whereas significant economic growth is relatively unlikely in Japan and other advanced countries due to issues such as declining populations and aging societies, developing countries are still expected to experience strong economic growth as their populations increase. The tremendous potential offered by middle-income earners in such counties, the so-called “volume zone”, is starting to attract a great deal of attention from all over the world.
Here at Hitachi Research Institute, we are conducting research into business strategies at the “base-of-pyramid” (BOP) level in particular, focusing on examples in various different countries.
