Today, almost two-thirds of humanity lives in high-income or high-growth countries. That proportion is up from less than a fifth 30 years ago. Unfortunately, the remaining 2bn live in countries with stagnant, or even declining, incomes. What makes this even more important is the worrying fact that some two-thirds of the 3bn increase in global population expected by 2050 will live in countries today enjoying little or no growth.

The overriding challenge is to shift more poor countries into the high-growth category. This is addressed by the recently published Growth Report, product of a commission consisting mainly of policymakers from developing countries, under the chairmanship of Michael Spence, a Nobel-laureate economist at Stanford University.

So what does the report contribute? Nothing useful, argued William Easterly of New York University (this forum, May 28). He suggested, instead, that its pragmatism represented “the final collapse of the ‘development expert’ paradigm that has governed the west’s approach to poor countries since the second world war”.

Thereupon, Professor Easterly promptly offered his own expert opinion, namely, that “more economic and political freedoms are associated with much less poverty”. This is true. But it is harsh, to put it mildly, for Prof Easterly to condemn the report when he offers what appears to be even emptier advice.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our expert panel appears below.

Read the debate - contributors so far include William Easterly, Michael Spence, Martin Wolf and Clive Crook.

June 3, 2008 6:50pm in Development, Emerging economies | Comment