No end to poverty

This commentary is designed to provide a critique of Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen In Our Lifetime, highlighting in particular the difficulties that arise from his focus on absolute poverty and his proposed recipe for its elimination. It begins by emphasising the many strengths of Sachs' arguments, but then suggests that these could usefully be tempered by greater attention to relative conceptualisations of poverty and the ethical grounds upon which his arguments are based. Six main issues are subsequently addressed: his use of the notion of a ladder of development; his concentration on countries rather than people; his understandings of geography and of history; his relative lack of attention to social and cultural dimensions of development; the inability of poor countries to absorb the levels of aid that he proposes; and the damage caused by suggesting that it is indeed possible to end poverty.     

Millennium Development Goal 1: poverty, hunger and decent work in Southeast Asia

This article considers three questions: 1) what progress has been made in achieving MDG1 targets?; 2) what challenges remain?; and 3) what more could and should be done? To examine these questions, the article assesses the progress of Southeast Asia in seeking to achieve MDG1. It argues that the region is 'on track' to achieve MDG 1 targets, although significant challenges such as inequality remain. Economic growth, significant structural change and incorporation into global value chains have contributed to MDG progress. However, this is a double-edged sword as exposure to global economic turbulence can increase. The longer-term reduction of poverty, inequality and social exclusion is a question of empowerment of local producers within value chains-a shift in economic power and control through pro-poor strategies strong enough to effect substantive structural change. The article outlines key concepts; identifies the main characteristics of Southeast Asian poverty; outlines what more needs to be done; and concludes by reprising the article's findings and weighing the prospects for 2010-15 and beyond.     

The true extent of global poverty and hunger: questioning the good news narrative of the Millennium Development Goals

The final report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concludes that the project has been ‘the most successful anti-poverty movement in history’. Two key claims underpin this narrative: that global poverty has been cut in half, and global hunger nearly in half, since 1990. This good-news narrative has been touted by the United Nations and has been widely repeated by the media. But closer inspection reveals that the UN’s claims about poverty and hunger are misleading, and even intentionally inaccurate. The MDGs have used targeted statistical manipulation to make it seem as though the poverty and hunger trends have been improving when in fact they have worsened. In addition, the MDGs use definitions of poverty and hunger that dramatically underestimate the scale likely of these problems. In reality, around four billion people remain in poverty today, and around two billion remain hungry – more than ever before in history, and between two and four times what the UN would have us believe. The implications of this reality are profound. Worsening poverty and hunger trends indicate that our present model of development is not working and needs to be fundamentally rethought.     

The economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty: An asset-based approach

Longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty. While a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty, this paper develops an asset-based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep-rooted, persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes. Drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies, this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long-term, persistent structural poverty, as well as relevant extensions of the popular Foster-Greer-Thorbecke class of poverty measures. The paper closes with reflections on how asset-based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies.     

Chronic poverty and entitlement theory

This paper examines chronic poverty in the developing country context within the entitlement theory approach. The dialogue on entitlement theory originally introduced by Sen is extended here to explore poverty and its persistence, or chronic poverty. A conceptual framework is presented, in which poverty and its persistence are explained within the context of the individual's economic and non-economic situation and development incentives. These attributes are influenced by the individual's entitlements. It is shown that poor endowments and resource base are important causes of persistent poverty. Policies aimed at reducing poverty therefore must address problems associated with improving the entitlements of individuals and households. The definition of ‘entitlements’ in the paper is not restricted to material possessions—the economic entitlements of the individual or the household—but is extended to incorporate the individual's skills, education and productive ability—the non-economic entitlements. The discussion is rooted in the increasing awareness of multidimensional poverty. The paper focuses on rural poverty in certain parts of India, where most of India's chronic poverty is situated. Over a million people can be classified as chronically poor in terms of duration, severity and deprivation. This is despite the government's commitment to the eradication of poverty since the early 1950s, with a total expenditure of nearly $7 billion in the past 50 years.     

Global poverty and orthodox security

This article examines the way in which the discourses of security and development have merged in the past decade as an important strand of global governance. It shows why this merging of discourses has occurred and assesses whether the newly embedded security-development discourse provides adequate conceptual tools for understanding the causes of global poverty. It concludes by setting out three paths that emerge from this security-development discourse and suggests that the ontological and epistemological claims at the heart of this understanding of International Relations and global poverty serve to reinforce global hierarchies of social power and privilege.     

Macroeconomic performance and poverty in Brazil

Drawing on Brazilian time-series data this study finds an inelastic link between poverty and wages over the macroeconomic cycle that is devoid of the asymmetric effects that characterise the phenomenon's response to changes in the rate of unemployment. Deepening of structural reforms in the second half of the 1990s had no effect on the aforementioned relationships, which also varied little by regional level of development. Finally, the connection between poverty and long-term income changes was more elastic, suggesting an association between the economy's recent disappointing performance in alleviating poverty and its lacklustre growth record over the past two decades.     

Achieving zero hunger: implementing a human rights approach to food security in Ethiopia

A human rights approach to food security seeks to empower vulnerable groups to claim their rights. It also reinforces a government’s obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food. Furthermore, it encourages the integration of the right to food into the design and implementation of food security policies. This article examines the human rights approach to food security, with specific reference to Ethiopia. It assesses the historical causes of Ethiopia’s food insecurity, and examines the legislative and policy measures that the country has adopted over the last three decades in order to achieve food security. Food insecurity in the country is largely explained by the absence of government accountability. In 1973 and 1984, the hunger caused by drought was transitioned to famine not because of overall unavailability of food in the country, but because the government failed to provide food aid to the starved people and concealed the occurrence of famines from the international donors. Despite designing some food security policies over the last three decades, the country has not yet adopted sufficient legislative and judicial measures to enforce the right to food. This article argues that Ethiopia should introduce a framework law on the right to food to end hunger in the context of achieving national food security.     

Rural poverty and agricultural performance in India

This paper examines time series evidence on rural poverty over the past two decades. The time series shows that the incidence of poverty fluctuates in response to variations in real agricultural output per head, but there is no significant time trend. There is a statistically significant inverse relationship between rural poverty and agricultural performance for India as a whole, suggesting that agricultural growth by itself tends to reduce the incidence of poverty. The analysis for individual states presents a somewhat different picture. The inverse relationship between output per head and rural poverty is observed in several states but there is also evidence that there are processes at work which tend to increase the incidence of poverty, independently of variations in agricultural output per head.     

Farm productivity and rural poverty in India

Armed with new data, we return to an old question from the pages of this journal: to what extent do India's rural poor share in agricultural growth? Combining data from 24 household sample surveys spanning 35 years with other sources, we estimate a model of the joint determination of consumption‐poverty measures, agricultural wages, and food prices. We find that higher farm productivity brought both absolute and relative gains to poor rural households. A large share of the gains was via wages and prices, though these effects took time. The benefits to the poor were not confined to those near the poverty line.     

起点还是终点?--以色列单边行动计划透析

2005年8月15日,备受各方关注的以色列单边行动计划正式实施,以色列单方面、全面撤出了加沙地带全部21个和约旦河西岸4个犹太人定居点.尽管此举遭到以定居点居民和国内右翼极端势力的强烈反对,但在以色列总理沙龙的强力推动和巴勒斯坦当局的密切配合下,单边行动计划虽遇抵抗但进展顺利,原计划3周完成的撤离工作仅仅用了9天就大功告成.当初曾是定居点"缔造者"和"急先锋"的沙龙为什么会成为定居点的"摧毁者"?以色列今后还会不会有类似大规模的撤离行动?和平的阳光是否即将普照中东?     

Risk-adjusted poverty in Argentina: measurement and determinants

This paper presents a methodology for adjusting measures of income and poverty for the risk faced by a household. The approach draws on the standard economic concept of risk aversion, and it is based on the intuition that households will prefer a steady stream of income to a variable one with the same mean. Relying on a Constant Relative Risk Aversion utility function, we use panel data for Argentina to compute risk-adjusted income and poverty measures. At the aggregate level, we find that taking risk into account substantially increases the poverty headcount. Moreover, a regression analysis suggests that many household characteristics are correlated not only with the average income of the household over time, but also with its variability.     

Production,prices and poverty in rural India

This paper challenges the view that increases in agricultural production have reduced poverty in rural India. Rural poverty is related directly to the consumer price index number for agricultural labourers, and inversely to agricultural production. The underlying time trend term indicates a residual rising trend in rural poverty after accounting for the influence of these two factors. There are plausible, though conjectural, reasons for believing that to a significant extent, the price factor as well as the variables implicit in the time trend term both derive their strength, if not their existence, from the nature of the growth processes which have generated the observed growth in agricultural production. These results contradict Ahluwalia's earlier conclusions, even though they are themselves based on essentially the same data set.     

Aid as an encounter at the interface: the complexity of the global fight against poverty

International development discourse has recently shifted its focus from top‐down economic adjustment to participative anti‐poverty policy. This shift hints at an acknowledgement of the local complexities within the poverty process and at a need to listen to and develop actions with the ‘poor’. But, whereas the mainstream argument remains couched in a technical framework, we argue that the fight against poverty is inevitably political. Conceptualising the aid industry as a set of global–local interfaces, it follows that a closer look at ‘participation’ in anti‐poverty interventions is needed to come to grips with the political issues involved. Four issues are discussed: the complexity of local ‘participation’, given the ‘polycephalous’ character of third world societies; the power biases in the aid chain; the potential problem of ‘false consciousness’; and the ambiguities of the role of local development brokers. We conclude that anti‐poverty policy is in need of ‘interface experts’, who, through ‘provocation’ can beget ‘participation’.     

论民族主义与帝国模式的终结

马克思主义经典作家充分认识到了民族主义的破坏性和革命性.民族主义是历史上前两种帝国模式崩溃的根本动因之一."新帝国论"存在众多缺陷,"新帝国模式"也摆脱不了未来历史的发展逻辑,即在今后的"民族主义时代"里,帝国模式将难于形成和维续,进而走向终结.