Rich-Get-Richer… Poor-Get-Poorer? African Inequality Gets More Unequal.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/12/africa/africa-inequality/
There’s one part of Africa where all one can see is endless progress. With yachts and trendy restaurants and ongoing construction and much more evidence of an economic boom, A term coined “Africa Rising,” the continual trend of African growth is representative of the expected 59% growth in multimillionaires in Africa in the next 10 years. This phenomena can easily be modeled with the networks theory of rich-get-richer.
In parallel with the rich of Africa getting richer, there’s an unavoidable consequence: the poor getting poorer. It’s no secret that Africa is a poverty-stricken country. Poverty gets worse over time, and the divide between the rich and the poor constantly increases as the relative richness of the rich grows in conjunction with the relative poorness of the poor.
The networks theory of rich-get-richer is based on the fact that node with more incoming links is more likely to get more links because of the existing webpages feeding into it. In a similar way, a node without links is less likely to get links because the more popular links will simply get more popular instead, so in a relative system, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
As idealistic as this seems, it is happening in real life. This phenomenon is making itself known in Africa, and while it may be an interesting theory to analyze, in action, it’s a terrible fate. The gap between the rich and poor should decrease for a country to prosper as a whole, not expand. The rich getting richer is great for web pages, but not for real life.