PHA-Exchange> ONE-LINERS ON POVERTY: USE THEM (1)

[schuftanc at who.ch]

(1)
Sound economic policies are conducive to growth, but so are sound social
policies.

In countries where income inequality is low, growth is twice as effective in
reducing poverty as in countries with high income inequality.
In countries where the distribution of income worsens during growth, the
impact of growth on poverty is not strong.

The impact of providing social services to the poor has been less than
expected, mainly because: 
a) investments in health and education, for example, have grown at a slower
pace than the GDP has grown (for redistribution to occur, what is needed is
increasing the share of public spending on poor people's needs);
b) the quality of the services expanded is poor;
c) interventions do not respond to the poor people's real needs;
d) there is no community involvement in making decisions about these
safety-net programs which do not attack the root causes of poverty.

The effects of adverse external shocks such as volatile capital flows and
falling terms of trade are not only transitory; such shocks can lock people
into poverty for the long term by causing irreversible damage to
children,for example (malnutrition, abandoning school, etc).  [Indonesia an
example?]

The total number of people living on less than $1 a day has risen from 1.18
billion in 1987 to 1.2 billion (24% of the world's population) in 1998; if
one excludes China, the figures are 880 million people in 1987 and 986
million (26.2% of the world's population) in 1998.

Poverty is more than low income, a lack of education and poor health. The
poor are powerless to influence the social and economic factors that
determine their well-being (...or poverty) and have their legal rights
violated all the time.

Unresponsiveness of state institutions and corruption are additional
barriers to poverty alleviation. Needed are participatory mechanisms to
prevent the domination by local elites.

Poor people define their poverty in terms of lack of opportunities, lack of
power and lack of security. This broader definition of poverty requires a
broader set of actions to fight it...

In international terms, industrial countries' protectionism causes annual
losses in welfare of more than twice the amount of overseas development
assistance.

(more to come)

Claudio
aviva at netnam.vn