I do not believe that there is an overall, empirically provable and universally acceptable answer to this question. Globalization has many dimensions:
• The world is not a single unit of study in the context of globalization. Balancing the net costs and benefits across countries, regions, cultural, economic and other blocs is not feasible other than in a statistical sense, and the interpretation of statistics is associated with values and other contexts;
• Balancing the net impacts across differing globalization themes – economics, environment, health, education, culture, social mobility, etc. is also value-laden;
• It is not possible identify the relative effects – i.e. what would various countries have looked like today without globalization;
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My logic, in summary, is that: the rate of growth in GDP has increased significantly for the countries most in need; GDP growth is fundamental not only to economic growth but also to social development; and some important negatives such as increasing inequality cannot entirely be attributed to globalization.
GDP growth
I accessed data on annual growth in GDP for the periods 1980-84 and 2010-2013 (World Bank, n.d.) and developed overall annual averages for these two periods. I grouped countries according to their level of development as indicated by population-weighted lifelong incomes (Nielsen, 2011). I then compared three country groups across the two time periods, where comparable data existed in both cases:
• For the 33 countries with the highest lifelong incomes, average annual growth in GDP was roughly static across the two time periods – 1.8% in 1980-84 and 1.7% in 2010-13;
• For the next 55 countries, average annual growth in GDP rose from 2.9% to