SYMPOSIUM: School of Earth & Environment Symposium on Sustainability

Some people are rich and others are poor. Some countries are rich and others are poor. Explaining the unequal global distribution of economic wealth has been a major goal of economists since the eighteenth century or earlier, yet there is still no generally accepted explanation. Are most of the world's poor people and underdeveloped countries in the tropics because these people are lazy, or have different values and 'work ethics' than their wealthier counterparts at high latitudes?