Introduction:

Weißbrich dedicates her study to a phenomenon that runs against current globalization euphoria: the dual peaks on worldwide distribution function, whereby the two groups of very poor and very rich states appear as fixed camps with low probability of transition. The author seeks to explain this on the basis of data from the World Bank and the Penn World Table, using the statistical method of “core densities.” She shows that a mutually amplifying conglomeration of low productivity, high population growth, low savings rates, and low education expenditures is responsible for the persistence of many states in the poverty trap. In terms of the future, the extension of a transition matrix offers a view of the time to come: even if shifts between the groups might be possible for individual countries, a bipolar world economic structure remains the more likely result.