If you haven’t noticed ;-), there is a very healthy debate going on about whether our current approaches to international aid (and in particular, rich country government to poor country government block grants) is working or not to help these poorer countries grow their become less poor. This is actually a very timely topic. Why?… Continue reading Great review of Dambisa Moyo’s book, Dead Aid
Poor Economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty By: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo This is a continuation of my book review. See Part I of book review > Here are a few highlights I took away for the book: Most poor aren’t hungry. Despite what the experts say. Generally, the… Continue reading Book Review: Poor Economics – Part II
Poor Economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty By: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo This is one of the best books I’ve read on addressing global poverty. And I’ve read a LOT of books on this topic. It summarizes a massive amount of primary in-the-field research and has lots of interesting… Continue reading Book Review: Poor Economics
A new IDS report says that 72% of the world’s poorest 1 billion people live in (so-called) middle income countries … a huge change from 20 years ago when > 90% of the world’s poor lived in low-income countries. Low-income countries are defined by the World Bank’s definition of < $995 per person GDP (which… Continue reading Most of the poor live now in middle income countries
A new report highlighted by The Economist, reports that 3 out of 10 new workers in the next decade will be in India. That’s right, India. Not China. By 2020, India will add 110M new workers. A few stats on India’s worker landscape: Expect that about 1/3 of those people will work in the services… Continue reading India — the world’s big new workforce
Researchers at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford have created a new way of measuring poverty which takes into account more factors than income. Called the “Multidimensional Poverty Index”, it includes factors such as: Does a family have a dirt or dung floor? Do they have a decent toilet/latrine?… Continue reading A better measure of global poverty?
I recently spent a week in Myanmar and posted updates on the situation in Myanmar and perspectives on Myanmar. One of the less known facts about Myanmar is that while ethnic Burmans represent an estimated 60-65% of the population of about 50 million (this may be low), malady the balance of the population are other… Continue reading Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar
In my quest for facts about poverty … here is very edutaining video by Hans Rosling demonstrating how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software — which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, doctor allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind… Continue reading The seemingly impossible is possible
I recently blogged about how the caste system was being lived out on the streets of India in the life of one very poor dalit woman. About a month ago, (yes, I’m behind on blogging) the Wall Street Journal wrote a front-page weekend edition piece called “Caste Away” about a dalit (aka an Untouchable) who… Continue reading The Caste System in India Lives
Some people have given me a bad time about my “over abundance” of posts on Jeffrey Sachs approach to defeating poverty and my quotes from not-so-centrist New York Times. As I state upfront, I’m not taking a liberal or conservative philosophy to defeating poverty. Rather I’m looking for what works and what scales up to… Continue reading American Generosity
Defeat Poverty 