Human development report 1998

World consumption during the 20th century has grown at an unprecedented rate, reaching about $24 trillion in 1998. This increase has been part of the historical progress of the century: Consumers today enjoy unprecedented abundance-yet more than 1 billion people have been left out of this consumption explosion. And consumption growth has brought its own problems-inequality, environmental stresses and adverse social impacts from rising pressures for competitive spending. Globalization has spread new products to new markets around the globe, creating many opportunities but also creating new needs for product safety and consumer information.

These trends are undermining the prospects for human development. Human Development Report 1998 reviews the challenges that all people and all countries face-to forge consumption patterns that are more environmentally friendly, more socially equitable, that meet basic needs of all and that protect consumer health and safety.

The Report includes a special contribution from Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, who wrote forty years ago in his seminal book The Affluent Society about private affluence amid public squalor. Revisiting the scene now, he finds that the contrasts, far from narrowing, have grown. And to them are added private and environmental squalor.