Today, I attended “Re-thinking poverty” conference at the UN led by Dr. Jomo Kwame Sundaram, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), and (Honorary) Research Coordinator for the G-24 Intergovernmental Group on International Monetary Affairs and Development (UNU-ONY, 2010). The conference was initiated as a book launch of “Rethinking Poverty: Report of the World Social Situation 2010″ composed by UN Dep. of Social and Economic Affairs.
Dr. Jomo Kwame Sundaram addressed a plethora of issues concerning methodology and implication of current poverty measures. He stated that the definition and methodology of “poverty line” have to be revisited. “Poverty line” itself is a misleading concept because the official (WB) definition of the poverty line is – what it takes to avoid being hungry. Therefore, poverty is synonymous with being hungry. Moreover, “poverty line” does not encompass the amount of social provisioning provided by the government, political and social freedoms, or gender/racial/class inequalities. Money measure of poverty is misleading because it fails to capture decreases in social provisioning available to the population (ex. China, social provisioning decreased, but the number of poor, according to official statistics, did not). Last decade the poorest of poor were found in East Asia, this decade they are to be found in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Jomo Kwame Sundaram criticized conventional “solutions” of poverty problem, such as, (1) good governance, (2) micro-finance, (3) establishment of property rights, (4) bottom-pyramid marketing. His critiques, based on the body of independent data, showed that these measures do not prove effective in reducing poverty per se. But, these measures produce favorable outcomes in the area of gender inequality, family dynamics (micro-finance), and class inequalities. Instead he proposed to focus on macro economic solutions to reduce world poverty. Sustainable development is one of the most important undertakings that should be universally accepted and practiced. Creation of decent jobs is another crucial goal that developing countries should focus on. And, lastly, social provisioning should be on the top of developing world governments’ agendas.
Dr. Jomo Kwame Sundaram briefly spoke about universalism vs. targeting in poverty reduction. He favors universalism because targeting is politically unsustainable, costly, and leads to exclusion of more than 3/4 of otherwise eligible population.
Some of my questions remained unanswered. For instance, what role does development of independent civil society play in reduction of poverty? Should the discourse about poverty be led by the developing nations? Are the female voices represented in the dialogue about poverty reduction?
Report of World’s Social Situation 2010 could be found here.
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