Globalisation is the increasing integration of separate economies leading to the emergence of a single global economy. Globalisation increases through the abolition of barriers to both trade and financial flows around the world. This procedure of deregulation generates more wealth and theoretically raises the standards of living in the global economy.

The standards of living in the global economy are quite difficult to measure - it is even more difficult to measure the impact of an outside factor such as globalisation. This is due to the difficulty in isolating the impact of globalisation from other factors. Standards of living in the global economy are devised of income, health, and education. These broad terms are indexed by GDP per capita, literacy, infant mortality, GNP per head, secondary and primary education, doctors per 100,000 people and so on. The impact of globalisation on these individual figures can be measured.

Living standards...