Not really a debate, but I am happy to have read this. I have read Jeffrey Sachs before and his claims about 1/6th of the world being in severe poverty. However from reading his stuff I got the impression that many of the poor lived in Africa. Nope. Although Africa isn’t lifting itself out of poverty well and has poor economic growth, most are still Asian.
http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/6
of the 1100 million
380.6 live in India
219.5 live in China
21.6 live in Pakistan
91.4 live in Nigeria
55.0 live in Bangladesh
Why is that important? All these countries have rapidly growing economies. India & China have the 2 fastest growing economies on earth and are going at about 8-10% a year. THe other 3 are growing at 5-7% a year. So off the bat almost 760 million of the 1100 million extremely poor people live in countries with rapidly growing economies. Just 60 years ago S. Korea was an agrarian society but 9-11% growth rates made them a developed nation. I don’t think these countries can continue their 5-10% growth rates forever, but hopefully they can long enough to lift 60-70% of the world’s extremely poor out of poverty.
http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2005/Section1_1_1.htm
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=33508
China has done alot to address severe poverty in the last 30 years. India, not so much but it is trying to change and address the problem. since 60% of the world’s poor live in those countries that is a good thing.
Sachs said that in 1980 it would’ve taken about 2% of GDP in rich nations spent on infrastructure and humanitarian aid to help lift the world’s poor out of poverty. We didn’t do that, but due to economic growth it now only takes 0.7% of GDP as we have more money and there are less desperately poor people. Hopefully by 2020 or so it will be down to 0.2-0.3% of the GDP of wealthy nations. By that time humanitarian interventions (which are increasing in the developed nations) & economic growth will be competent to lift everyone out of desperate poverty.
then we can all get naked and sing ‘we are the world’. I’ll bring my jews harp.