Schism

Preview - R.F.H. Chapter 2 Ending Poverty part 3

ONE WAR ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS

At least 40,000,000 people had died.  Some estimates say it was more than 70,000,000.  Either number is enough to make World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, followed closely by the Mongol Conquest of the thirteenth century.  Much of Europe and Russia were reduced to rubble.  Millions were displaced and had no way to support themselves.  It was the kind of situation that could pull an entire continent out of security into generations of poverty.  But with the end of the war in sight, many of the Allied countries came together to plan for the future.  They looked beyond the devastation, beyond retribution to envision a world with less war and less poverty.  In 1944, the World Bank was formed and its original purpose was to finance reconstruction in Europe.  And as economies and societies began to regrow in Europe, the World Bank turned elsewhere and switched its focus to poverty.  It began to distribute loans to poorer countries, but there were strings attached.

When you borrow money from a bank, they generally want assurances of two things: what you will use the money for and how quickly you will repay the loan.  If you are getting a loan to put a new roof on your house, you are expected to use the money on the roof instead of on a vacation, and you are expected to make monthly payments.  But if you were a developing country that borrowed money, the World Bank would tell you what contractor you could use.  They might tell you that your government-operated services needed to become private.  They might tell you where your children had to go to school or which companies would start doing business in your country.

The Bank, and its sister organization the International Monetary Fund have often been criticized for policies that ended up reinforcing poverty instead of ending it.  Free trade agreements ended up being biased towards richer nations; borrowing countries were forced to export their resources and often suffered environmental as well as economic degradation.  But, in the last few years, things seem to have been changing at the World Bank.  They have started a program of loan forgiveness and have cut down on the number of strictures required of borrowing nations.  Like capitalism’s slow spread of abundance, the World Bank’s progress seems to be picking up steam.

Often working next to the Bank, and generally suffering less criticism, the United Nations, formed in 1945, amped up its fight against poverty in 2000.  The Millennium Development Goals presented eight focus areas in its fight against poverty that it hopes to maintain by 2015.  Some of these goals, like cutting the percentage of people living in extreme poverty in half have already been achieved.  Others, including an emphasis on increased education in poor countries have made great progress and should be met in the next two years.

Large organizations like the World Bank and U.N. are not the only ones who have joined the struggle to end global poverty.  Private charities, once only known as small “aid societies” grew and began to have a wider impact.  Groups like One, Care and Oxfam now provide advocacy, aid and development assistance all over the world.

Every type of organization that is working to end charity, from capitalism to non-governmental groups, to government programs to charities has been the target of some form of criticism.  Some say that one program is too much like or different from a particular political ideology.  Some say that aid leads to dependency.  Most of the criticisms have some validity.  It is true that direct aid lifts less people out of poverty than local economic growth.  Government programs can have socialist tendencies.  Capitalism does look out for number one.  But, the important thing to remember is that these criticisms do not see how all of these approaches have been working together.  When poverty acts as a pool of oil floating on the ocean, no single approach can trap it.  The interlocking effect of all of these different approaches to helping the poor around the world must be used to eliminate this type of suffering.

TRAPPING THE TRAPS

You struggled all your life to make ends meet and you’ve done well.  You have fed your family, built a safe house for them, seen that your children had at least a few more years in school than you did.  But one day, something beyond your control happens.  It might be a drought, or a storm or a fire or an earthquake.  It might be a factory shutting down without warning.  It might be a civil war or an economic downturn that makes it almost impossible to sell what you make or grow.

You try to stretch your money, to make sure that food is on the table, but soon your children are hungry.  Even though you know you need the energy to try to find work and money, you give them what is left on your plate and you go without.

But then, an aid truck arrives and hands out food.  Aid workers help with rebuilding and with procuring clean water.  Suddenly, starvation isn’t your only concern and you are able to start thinking about what you can do to improve your own life.

Your local government, perhaps with a loan from the World Bank, begins to improve the roads and hospitals near you.  They build a school nearby.  Now, it will be much easier for your children to go to school and minor illnesses can be stopped before they become major ones.  More worries have been lifted and you are able to start working again.

Watching your neighbors, you have an idea that will help them all, a small product that will improve their lives and earn money for your family.  You get a micro-loan that was originally financed by the U.N. and are not only able to provide more for your family, but you start a business that creates jobs and lifts others out of uncertainty.

All of these pieces: charity, foreign aid and investment, government works programs, and capitalist economic growth are part of the strategy for ending poverty.  Working in concert, they are quicker and more effective at helping the poor.  Alone, they are slow and fail to trap the causes of poverty enough to make a lasting difference.

Without food aid and clean water in an emergency, suffering people cannot focus on rebuilding their lives.  Without basic infrastructure like roads or a safe, secure society, private business ventures will have little chance of success.  Without adequate education, people will have no choice besides dependency. 

Luckily, for many of the world’s poor, we have learned that poverty needs to be approached from all of these directions at once.  What at first seems like a dizzying array of charities, government programs and organizations whose object is to eradicate poverty turns out to be a necessary blend of strategies that help people help themselves.

WHERE WE ARE, WHERE WE ARE GOING

The last twenty years have seen dramatic improvement in poverty rates around the world.  In 1990, 1.91 billion people lived on less than $1.25 a day.  In 2010, it was less than 1.22 billion living on that same amount.  While this is a striking reduction, consider that during that time, the world’s population went from 5.25 billion to nearly 7 billion.  Not only the percentage of poor went down, but also absolute numbers declined in a time of large population growth.

During that same time, the number of children under five who died each year fell from 12.4 million to 6.9 million.

Looking back further, we see another amazing change.  Now, the poorest country in the world has a better life span and lower child mortality than the richest country did in 1800. 

Much of the change in recent years has been due to economic growth in China, but what has been accomplished there can be replicated elsewhere.  Many are stepping up to help this growth happen across the globe.

The World Bank’s new goal is to reduce the extreme poverty rate to less than 3% by 2030.  The United Nations is extending and expanding its Millennium Development Goals to reach beyond 2015.  Private charities continue their work and capitalism, our antihero who has been joined by a band of eager sidekicks, continues to enable people to help themselves.

But you still wouldn’t want to loan it twenty dollars.

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(Author's note:  I think I'll end the preview of Reasons For Hope here.  I hope you've al enjoyed it.  I'll leave it up for a few days, but will then be back with the announcement of the winner of our first contest and I'll also soon post a preview of one of the next books...Entanglement!)