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The article discusses on the measure used to gauge poverty in the U.S., Europe and other developing countries. It discusses that the present official measure of poverty in the U.S. is flawed and both, the poverty threshold and measurement of available resources should be improved. It reports that European countries provided with sufficient social aid but they face a technical problem of relative poverty threshold. Also mentioned are the levels of economic development in developing and underdeveloped countries.

China's recent economic growth has been driven by an apparent acceptance by the Chinese government of many of the key insights of Hayek's economic and social thought. Current Chinese economic policies stand in stark contrast to those being pursued by the EU and many European countries, where interventionist policies of the kind Hayek predicted would lead to relative impoverishment and declining freedom are being pursued. The long-term consequence of these two trends is likely to be the economic dominance of China over Europe in the present century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on typologies and evidence that serve as a guide to economic growth in Europe during the nineteenth century. There has also been increased reliance on comparative methods by historians seeking to achieve a cross-fertilization of explanatory ideas. For both purposes it is desirable, for the first purpose essential, that any historical generalizations called into aid should be not only true of several particular instances but also should be very widely applicable. It could be harmfully misleading if what looked to be proclamations of universal relationships turned out to be no more than accounts of one or two highly individual cases, disguised in the language of generality. All the chief schemes expounding alleged universalities in the history of economic growth have received plenty of criticism, both appreciative and hostile, but it is doubtful whether they have often been starkly confronted by the question whether the evidence they use is comprehensive enough to provide a secure foundation of genuine history for edifices as vast as they have grown to be. They have been challenged on grounds of unclarity or inappropriateness in their basic concepts, or because they have been inaccurate on some specific points, or because some particular case may be more convincingly interpreted by postulating a different chain of causation.