The world as a whole has seen unprecedented growth over the past 30 years, but the prosperity has not been evenly shared and AIDS-ravaged sub-Saharan Africa in particular is stagnating, a U.N. development report said, according to Reuters. "When it comes to human development, the rising tide of global prosperity has lifted some boats faster than others, and some boats are sinking faster," the U.N.'s Human Development Index (HDI) for 2006 said. The index -- which rates countries on wealth, life expectancy and education -- ranked Norway as the best country in which to live and Niger in West Africa at the bottom, unchanged from last year. "People in Norway are more than 40 times wealthier than people in Niger and they live almost twice as long," the report said. The combined income of the 500 richest people in the world now exceeds that of the poorest 416 million people, while in the HDI's 31 lowest ranked countries -- covering 9 percent of the world's population -- average life expectancy is 46 years, or 32 years less than the highest ranking nations. An estimated one billion people do not have access to clean water and 2.6 billion people have no sanitation. "Being born on the wrong street in the global village carries with it a large risk in terms of survival prospects," the report said. Sub-Saharan Africa, where tens of millions of people face a devastating AIDS pandemic and chronic shortages of clean water and sanitation, was particularly hard hit. --SAP
