While Developing and Emerging countries are characterized generally by lower income levels than Developed Countries their rate of growth is higher, sometimes substantially higher. If the higher growth rates of the Developing and Emerging countries can be maintained this can give rise to a reordering of rankings.
 
 
In a study of long-term global growth prospects the OECD conclude:
‘Over the next half century, the un-weighted average of GDP per capita, is predicted to grow by roughly 3% annually in the non-OECD area, as against 1.7% in the OECD area. As a result, by 2060 GDP per capita of the currently poorest economies will more than quadruple (in 2005 PPP terms), whereas it will only double in the richest economies. China and India will experience more than a seven-fold increase of their income per capita by 2060’.
 
About 1,000 years ago the economic centre of the world was in Central Asia, when it accounted for 2/3 of the world’s wealth (Professor Joseph Cheng 2013). By 1900 the industrial revolution had moved the economic centre to Northern Europe. By 1980 growth in the US shifted the economic centre to the Mid-Atlantic. By 2008 the economic centre had moved to the east of Helsinki, reflecting the rise of China and East Asia. By 2025 it could have shifted back to Central Asia (McKinsey Global Institute 2013).