https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02098-3
"By 2030, says the World Bank, something like 574 million people will be living
in extreme poverty. That is equivalent to the combined population of the
European Union and Japan. The United Nations has a Sustainable Development Goal
(SDG) to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030; this was always ambitious, even
when policymakers and researchers set the SDGs in 2015. It is now unattainable.
The past few years have bucked a positive trend. Back in 1990, almost two
billion people were living under the extreme-poverty line, which the World Bank
currently defines as an income of no more than US$2.15 a day at 2017 prices. By
2015, there were fewer than 700 million. Had that trend continued, extreme
poverty would have been eliminated by, and possibly before, the SDG target.
But the trend had started to slow by 2020, and the COVID‑19 pandemic reversed
it, forcing an extra 75 million people below the extreme-poverty line. And the
pandemic wasn’t the only factor. Soaring food and energy costs after Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine, ongoing conflicts and, increasingly, the effects of
climate change have all played a part. Extreme poverty is starting to decline
again, but it will take until 2024 to return to 2019 levels. A rethink in
approach is clearly needed — and researchers can get involved.
The World Bank, headquartered in Washington DC, is one of the go-to agencies
for both measuring poverty and prescribing solutions to end it. Some 80% of
people who escaped poverty between 1993 and 2017 were in China and India —
countries that posted impressive economic growth figures for that period. The
bank says that, similarly, economic expansion in the countries that now have
the highest numbers of people in extreme poverty — most of which are in
sub-Saharan Africa — would help them to follow China and India’s lead.
Some researchers doubt that economic growth automatically leads to reductions
in extreme poverty, saying that it often coincides with widening income
inequality. But even if we accept the World Bank’s premise, economic growth
rates across Africa have consistently been much lower than in China and India,
and on current trends they will remain so. That poses the question: what other
levers can countries pull to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of
people?
One answer was established in many now-high-income countries that were
rebuilding after the Second World War. A number of countries in Western Europe,
for example, established basic social and health-care protections at a time
when many nations were dependent on aid from the United States. The principle
that these protections help people to escape extreme poverty is just as valid
today, and applying it would help countries to build resilience to shocks such
as pandemics and climate change."
Via Wayne Radinsky.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
