There are less children living in poverty now than every before. Yet, inequality among the social classes is rising from the U.S. to China.

Thanks to global capitalism, there are much less poor people running around the world today than there was a decade ago. But there are also more rich people. Way more. And in rich countries, there are less middle class. So even as poverty is shrinking, inequality is rising among income levels as the new global plutocracy takes shape.

Today, 43% live on less than $2 per day. Thirty years ago, around 75% of the developing world was living on that. Extreme poverty—those living on less than $1.25 per day —has declined even more. The share of those living hand-to-mouth is down to 22% in 2008 from 52% in 1981, according to World Bank’s head of poverty reduction, Otaviano Canuto.

On Wednesday, Canuto wrote on the Bank’s Growth & Crisis blog that despite the substantial declines in global poverty, significant income disparities have not changed on a global level, due in part to increased income disparities in the emerging markets like China and Russia. Both governments have expressed concern over rising income inequality in those nations.

Russia’s capital, Moscow, is home to more billionaires than New York and London, but one drive through Moscow and it is clear that this sort of wealth is not trickling down to the have-nots. Moscow looks old, except for the new steel towers being eructed by VTB Bank and others across the Moscow River.

Canuto asks: so long as poverty is falling around the world, should we worry about income inequality? Considering he is the head of the Bank’s poverty reduction program, his answer should come as no surprise.  Canuto says,

Even if incomes are growing for everyone, persistent inequality should concern policy makers when perceptions of ‘unfairness’ lead to political instability, when income inequality limits the potential for future growth and poverty reduction, and when inequality harms people’s opportunities and welfare.”

I’m staring at a picture of Carlos Slim on the cover of the Forbes billionaire issue. The richest man in the world. And Sara Blakely, my age, a billionaire. And I’m looking at the Principality of Monaco ads and I’m getting jealous. Don’t these guys ever have less? One percent of a billion dollars is a $100 million in annual interest, people! That’s a lot of money.  I work very hard. I have my Masters Degree.  I’ve never cracked six figures, like most Americans. Where’s the nearest Occupy campsite?

The inequality worries investors, too, not just the common riff-raff.

“People are angry because they are seeing their living standards coming down and they are not going to stay quiet,” says Rudolph Riad Younes, managing director of Artio Global Management in New York City.

Recent political and social developments show that the effects of income inequality manifest themselves in many countries around the world. So much so that inequality was a central theme at last year’s World Economic Forum. Countries known to be relatively egalitarian, like Sweden, Finland and Denmark, have all seen rises in income disparity between the classes, Canuto said.

“It is also a concern in the U.K. and the U.S., where ‘occupy’ movements have coalesced in protest of income and wealth disparities between the top one percent and the remaining 99,” Canuto writes.  “And over the past year in the Arab world, the social unrest that swept the region serves, in part, as a reflection of deep injustices that result from little opportunity and hope for the youth.”

A Citi Private Bank study last month showed that the world’s wealthy are most concerned with losing their riches to government policies designed to pacify the middle and lower incomes.

See: Inequality Occupies The Minds Of Davos Participants–World Economic Forum brief.