The End of Poverty

In 1950 the world's population stood at just over 2.5 billion people, about half of them living in extreme poverty, generally defined today as subsisting on less than $1.25 per day. By the end of 2011, with the population over 7 billion, the poorest of the poor amounted to about 1.1 billion according to the World Bank, the agency that measures such things. That represents a sizable reduction in absolute numbers, and a stunning achievement in percentage terms.

We don't have that kind of poverty in the United States. We have our issues with homelessness and food insecurity but the Department of Agriculture sets the poverty level here at an income of about $64 per day for a family of four. That is misleading because a family that poor often qualifies for subsidized housing, food, health care, and other benefits that aren't counted as income.

But in parts of India and Africa the poverty is real and it is desperate. Families are not properly fed, housed, or clothed. They don't have access to clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care, or rudimentary education. It doesn't have to be like that. Where that kind of destitution exist the reasons are generally political. Poor governance accounts for most of the intractable poverty that still exists.

For proof, look around the globe at the regions that are no longer called third world. China, most of East Asia, and Latin America have all made enormous strides. How? They cleaned up some of the worst corruption, adopted rule of law, opened up markets, and invested in infrastructure like electricity, roads and water works. They educated their children and got out of the way so people could help themselves. Many of them have a ways to go before they achieve western living standards but their problems look a lot more manageable than they did a few decades ago.

It can happen in India and Africa too, the two regions where the numbers are the most imposing. The UN's Millennial Development Goals, set in 2000, expire in 2015 and new ones will be drawn up over the next year or so. The Economist has suggested one of them should be to move another billion people above the extreme poverty line. That's an ambitious goal but it could be done. Maybe we could even define poverty up a bit as we have in the United States.

There are some practical things we can do to help. Some of them we are already doing, but we can do more. Anti-malaria campaigns have done a lot of good. So have aids treatment programs. Catholic Relief Services and other NGOs have had good success with Fair Trade.

But I think the real heavy lifting will be done with good old fashioned liberal capitalism.  We've done a lot to tear down international trade barriers but the benefits don't always reach the poorest of the poor. We can include in our negotiations measures to see that they do. We can also pay a little more attention to Africa and India. Neither are included in the major trade deals currently under discussion. They should be. Prosperous Indians and Africans are in our strategic and economic best interests.

If we offer the right incentives, it is reasonable to expect our trading partners to implement reforms. Russia did. So did China. Neither is a Jeffersonian Democracy today but both are better places to live than they were a few years ago. It is my observation that liberal democracy normally follows economic prosperity, not the other way around.

We may have it in our grasp to all but eliminate the worst of global poverty within our lifetimes. Wouldn't it be nice to leave our grand children a better world than we inherited?