The global economy is on a growth streak that is shaping up to be the broadest and strongest expansion in more than three decades.
Rising spending and investment by consumers and businesses worldwide are boosting national economies on every continent, pushing down unemployment rates in many countries and lifting business earnings and confidence.
Of 60 nations tracked by investment firm Bridgewater Associates, not one is in recession -- the first time that has been true since 1969.
Yet this is a different kind of boom from any other in the post-World War II era, analysts say. The soaring economies of China, India, Russia, Brazil and other emerging nations increasingly are setting the pace, overshadowing the slower growth of the United States, Europe and Japan, where the benefits of the expansion have eluded many workers.
"This is the first recovery where developing economies are playing a dominant role," said James Paulsen, chief strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, which manages money for big investors such as pension funds.
The trend is being driven by free trade, which has created millions of jobs in emerging nations in recent years, fueling stunning new wealth in those countries.
China's meteoric rise has been well-documented, but the boom has spread far and wide to include much of the rest of Asia, as well as Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa.
With commodity exports and tourism surging, the South African economy grew about 5% last year, adjusted for inflation. That was nearly four times the average growth rate of the major European countries.
The township of Soweto in South Africa, once on the front line in the anti-apartheid struggle, today is the scene of a more subtle revolution: the transformation into an upwardly mobile, black middle-class neighborhood where wine tastings and car shows are regular events and where a 700,000-square-foot mall is under construction.
"Business is good," says retired teacher Lolo Mabitsela, 69, who runs a thriving Soweto bed-and-breakfast. Foreign tourists and white South Africans who once avoided Soweto now book rooms at her inn, she says.
In India, economic deregulation and a fast-growing technology service sector are powering consumer demand.
College teacher Rakhi Maral notes that local stores in her city of New Delhi now stock expensive imported perfumes that in years past could be found only at duty-free shops.
