Is It Crazy To Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?

Earlier this week, my phone updated me on an article from the New York Times with this title "Is it Crazy To Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?".

Being a GPP Minor, anything with poverty in an article is something I am deeply curious on reading about. So I read on...

The author of this article, Annie Lowery, explores the different dimensions of poverty eradication on both sides of the argument. In late April at the IMG & World Bank Conference, Jim Young Kim, the president of the World Bank writes "2030" on a piece of paper and claims that this is the global target to end poverty. This part of the article I thought was a reminder of GPP 115 with the Millennium Development Goals for 2015. As Lowery has her own reservations about eradicating poverty, she interviews Jeffery Sachs who has the utmost faith in the 2030 goal, and believes that it is absolutely feasible. Nany Birdsall, president of the Center of Global Development, also has the same sentiments as Sachs.

The World Bank aims for everyone to be above $1.25 each day, but there are many counter arguments to this aim. Stuies show that 1/2 or 3/4 of most families' income goes towards food. Other expenses become put in the back burner, and that's what categorizes people in the poverty pool; their lack of resources. Even though, the Millennium Development Goals achieved their goal "early" in 2010 when there was a 21% drop in poverty rates from the 43 % in 1990, there are still many factors to take into account. This statistic did not take into account the shift from labor intensive work to capital intensive work. This switch caused an uprising in the economics, but the shift resulted from rural movement to urban movement. These movements were caused by the time era and the eruption of technology. Each country has their own governmental and economical issues that expecting to eradicate poverty by 2030 is expecting all the countries to be in the same level of playing field. 

Lowery interviews a developmental researcher, Pritchett who criticizes the WB's goal that $1.25 is too little. It is "penurious, charity like, and not development." Expecting people to live above $1.25 is not going to help their economic being. It is not development, he argues, but barely getting by. Pritchett argues that poverty cannot be eradicated if the goal is only to live above $1.25. There would need to be more changes, and the goal needs to be higher if we expect development. 

Poverty and development are two different worlds. Eradicating poverty cannot be done by simply hoping and expecting the impoverish population to live above $1.25. Poverty is a lifestyle, and within that lifestyle, the only way it could be lifted is if there was development. The development of a better infrastructure of the economy or government, or the living situations. It cannot be done by each individual. 

The last part of this article is what stood out to me, and what caused me to write about it.

“The developing world has gotten its act together,” Birdsall says. But poverty reduction “depends on the advanced economies getting their act together, too.”

There are so many factors as to how to "fight" poverty. I only hope that the world and those who have power, would be able to soon see that.

Read Article Here