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The world’s three biggest economies today are the United States, Japan, and Germany. But by 2050 most model projections have China and India leaving all other countries save the United States in the dust. The Goldman Sachs model, for example, projects U.S. gross domestic product to rise from USD $10.1 to $35.1 trillion, Japan’s from $4.4 to $6.7 trillion, and Germany’s from $1.9 to $3.6 trillion by then. In contrast, India’s GDP is projected to rise from $0.5 to $27.8 trillion and China’s from $1.4 to a whopping $44.4 trillion. Brazil and Russia are projected to rise from $0.5 to $6.1 trillion and $0.4 to $5.9 trillion GDP, respectively.68 China would thus overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy and India would become the third largest.

The 2008-09 global financial crisis only reaffirmed this picture. While the economies of America, Japan, and Germany were shrinking, the economies of Brazil, India, and China grew 2%, 6%, and 9% annually, respectively.69 By late 2009 Brazil, one of the last countries in and first out of the downturn, was again growing 5% per year and was on pace to become the world’s fifth-largest economy even sooner than Goldman Sachs envisioned, overtaking Britain and France sometime after 2014.70 New post-crisis modeling by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reaffirmed that China’s GDP would indeed surpass that of the United States, probably by 2032. By 2050 the world’s three largest economies would still be China ($45.6 trillion), the United States ($38.6 trillion), and India ($17.8 trillion) .71

While such growth rates sound dramatic, they are actually less spectacular than those enjoyed by Japan for three decades between 1955 and 1985. If these economic model projections hold—and in accordance with our “The Models Are Good Enough” ground rule let’s assume here that they will—the world will move from having not one huge economy but three. Of the original top three, only the United States will remain, in distant second place behind China. The relative clout of deposed Japan, Germany, and others of the original G6 (France, Italy, and the United Kingdom) on the world stage will be diminished.

So if China and India are poised to dethrone the original G6 economies, what does that mean for you? Will Chinese and Indians soon enjoy more lavish lifestyles than Germans and Italians? Will Parisians emigrate to São Paulo, seeking better pay and a happier future for their children?

Almost certainly not. Recall that one of the big drivers of all this economic growth is rising urban population and modernization. The economies of China and India must grow to support that. If they didn’t, per capita incomes would decrease. The cost of living would have to go down, not up. That’s not how things work. Can you imagine all those rural migrants pouring into New York City in the early 1900s driving the price of food and housing down?

No. Asia’s rising cities demand that the economies of China and India grow many times over, and this will also multiply per capita incomes in these countries. However, that progress in personal wealth will still be relative to the extremely low per capita incomes of today (averaging less than $3,000 per year for both countries in 2010). With the sole exception of Russia,72 personal incomes in BRIC countries are not expected to surpass those of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, or the United States by 2050. An average Indian today makes less than one-thirtieth the income of an average Brit. In 2050 she or he will make less than one-third .73 That’s a tenfold improvement, to be sure, but still a yawning divide. The Goldman Sachs model, for example, projects that the average Chinese worker will earn around USD $31,000 per year in 2050. That is much better than in 2010 ($2,200 per year) but still substantially below the projected 2050 per capita incomes for Italy ($41,000), Germany ($49,000), France ($52,000), the United Kingdom ($59,000), Japan ($67,000), and the United