GLOBALISATION AND HEALTH: "The maladies of affluence: The poor world is getting the rich world's diseases," The Economist, 11 August 2007,p. 49.

The raw deal is this: far longer lives but not a commensurate capacity to deal with chronic disease.

A great graph charts this: Low income economies feature more deaths by percentage from infections (almost 50%) than chronic (just over 40%). But already by low-middle (my New Core low-end) income, it's chronic (75%) way over infectious (just over 15%). That skew only gets heavier as you grow in income.

The problem is natural enough: I get some money for disposable income and I like my cigs, my liquor and my fattier foods. For example, 300m Chinese men smoke today, which pretty much guarantees you'll have a huge cancer industry right on the heels of its emergence. Nowadays, one-fifth of Chinese kids are overweight, the unsurprising affliction of all those "little emperors" (or one-child boys).

A big problem with emerging economies in this regard: they still focus so heavily on infections that they truly short themselves on assets for dealing with chronic problems.