However, progress appears to have stagnated, or even reversed, since the 2008 global downturn.
While rich Asians have become the highest-earning group in the nation, income growth among poor Asians has largely stagnated.
Overall the world has made progress since 2014, the report authors noted, saying that access to communications and education have increased rapidly, though noted that personal rights, personal safety, and tolerance had stagnated or decreased.
What all this points to, then, is a process in which many poor countries went from a pre-industrial employment structure to an industrial one (but some stagnated, in particular in Africa), and in which all rich countries largely went from an industrial to a service-based employment structure.
The data also highlight the problems facing Latin America, where wages have stagnated and sometimes fallen in real terms, and Greece, where average hourly wages have more than halved since 2009, according to Euromonitor.
In science, the UK managed to improve, climbing from 21st to 15th place in the table of 70 participating nations, but stagnated at 22nd for reading, and 27th for maths is disappointing for a nation with a successful education exports industry (think of the overseas students sent both the UK universities and private schools, swelling the coffers of both).
Since their incomes have not stagnated — far from it — one might expect them to be taking some of the benefits of very high hourly earnings in the form of shorter days and longer weekends.
Although benefiting massively as consumers, many voters have lost out as workers, as jobs have shifted abroad and incomes have stagnated.
However, progress appears to have stagnated, or even reversed, since the 2008 global downturn.
" Japan's public debt has increased rapidly over the past 20 years as social security spending rose, tax revenues stagnated and successive governments used fiscal stimulus to try and revive growth.
