The world has definitely improved on poverty on a holistic scale. "In 1981 some 42% of the world's population were extremely poor, according to the World Bank... at best, they barely had enough money to eat and pay for necessities like clothes. At worst, they starved." Britain eradicated poverty levels to drop below 10% in a century, while countries such as Japan started later and with higher poverty levels and almost eradicated them. This article argues that because we have had such a huge hit on poverty, that the levels of poverty will soon flatline to a point where it is almost impossible to make any more progress because there will always be poverty in a pocket of the world, and the pockets will usually grow. In some areas, such as the sub-Saharan Africa, the poverty rate is declining slowly because the total population is growing at a somewhat large rate. 36 of the governments in Africa are also consider "flimsy" which indicates that they don't have a lot of power and control over how the poor people of their country would be taken care of.
Ultimately, the world is trying to combat the slowing rate of decrease in poverty, but it will be difficult to do so because there is less poverty.
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21719790-going-will-be-much-harder-now-world-has-made-great-progress
1 comment:
This is an interesting article, although the average human development has improved significantly since the late 1980s, progress is uneven. There is systemic discrimination against minority groups and women. I do not agree that because there "is such a huge hit on poverty, that the levels will soon flatline." There are many countries which have rules and regulations in place where only the top 10% reap benefits from the profits made by their respective economies. Large more well developed countries such as the United States and Britain support regimes that intentionally mean to oppress their lower class or minorities. They make sure that economic mobility is close to impossible. So in my opinion, governments and states are largely to blame for slow decline in poverty. However, it will be interesting to see the trends in poverty as the population of the world grows at large. Perhaps, countries will need to adopt policies which curb overpopulation such as one child policy we previously saw in China.
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