In the 2014 Gates Annual Letter, Bill Gates stated the three myths that block progress for the poor and made the claim that "by 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world," Slate.com reported.
In the letter, Gates says by 2035, "More than 70 percent of countries will have a higher per-person income than China does today. Nearly 90 percent will have a higher income than India does today."
He became the trending topic Wednesday and received a lot of attention for his predictions in the letter, but according to Slate, Gates comment about there being "no poor countries" by 2035 is "ambitious."
Slate cited Chris Blattman who has stated Kenyan and Ethiopian households, two of the African states economically growing the fastest, would need to grow at an 8 to 10 percent rate per year for the next 20 years to reach the benchmark goal used by Gates: China's current level of income.
Blattman has also stated though China has made tremendous steps at reducing poverty, in 2009 the amount of people in the United States matched that of those making less than two dollars a day in China, according to Slate.
Slate also pointed out the average per capita income in the sub-Saharan Africa, where 60 percent of the worlds poorest lived in 2008, increased by a measly $20 to $762 from $742 between 1993 and 2008, according to a paper by Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic.
According to the Economist's Free Exchange blog, if South Africa and Seychelles were removed from the previous equation, the region has actually seen a decline in economic prosperity with a per capita income from $608 to $556, Slate reported.
Slate concluded that though Gates is correct in predicting a bettering of human life due to the improvements in human welfare in the past two decades, global inequality is still rising at alarming levels, and that fact should be acknowledged.
