Challenges in defining and addressing global poverty

Global Poverty

Since the modern era of international cooperation began, there have been efforts to eradicate poverty in this world. Ultimately, these efforts have run into roadblocks. Poor governance in many parts of the world is highly correlated with poverty. While wealth in the world has increased, rapid population increases have made it difficult to spread that wealth around. Thus, while there have been some successes in terms of reducing poverty, especially with economic liberalization, there remains a lot of work to be done. The statistics can be staggering. Over three billion people live on less than $2.50 per day and 80% of people live on less than $10 per day. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day because of poverty and over one-quarter of children in the developing world suffer from malnourishment and stunted physical development. Not only is there a high level of poverty, but in many countries the gap between rich and poor is widening rather than shrinking (Shah, 2013).

Clearly, there are significant challenges preventing the eradication of poverty. Growing populations are one -- new people mean increasing resource consumption, and this is growing at a rate faster than resource development. Indeed, this is a negative feedback loop. The more people are lifted out of poverty, the more they consume. Thus, eliminating poverty only serves to exacerbate one of the key underlying causes of increased poverty. But the problem is more complex than simply expanding populations. In many countries, the resources exist to address poverty, but the political will or ability seems to be lacking. Moreover, among nations with the wealth and power to affect change in other parts of the world, there also seems to be a lack of leadership in the world. Solutions are not especially creative, and can be bogged down in administrative processes and attempts to appease myriad interests. There is a genuine need for truly transformational leadership to tackle poverty.

The Poverty Problem

Part of the issue with poverty is simply to define it and determine how many of the world's people are genuinely poor. Deaton (2001) points out that even simple metrics like dollars/day are misleading because of variable purchasing power and variable levels of dependence on subsistence agriculture, paid housing and other costs. Is a person truly impoverished when they provide all of their own food and do not pay rent? How much luxury should be allowed in the determination of poverty? Deaton notes there is a disconnect between statistics and the actual experience of people on the ground -- rising GDPs per capita do not necessarily reflect rising living standards any more than dollar/day figures without context truly reflect a person's level of impoverishment.

Regardless of how one counts poverty, however, it clearly still exists in the world. People in many countries struggle to find the necessities of life, including water and health care, or the necessities of advancement like education and housing. But the challenges of even defining poverty highlight the complexity of the issue, because the next natural step in reducing poverty is to understand the underlying causes. Some poverty is induced by conflict -- millions in Syria are now impoverished when they were not as of a few years ago, for example. Addressing temporary poverty is a different matter entirely than addressing systemic poverty, as exists in large swathes of sub-Saharan Africa or on the Indian subcontinent.

Political stability is clearly an antecedent for the eradication of poverty, yet the international system has no serious mechanisms in place for ensuring such stability, let alone good governance. Another antecedent is that nations must have populations in line with their resources. Some impoverished nations stand almost no chance of escaping poverty because they have large and rapidly-growing populations but constrained geography. This is the situation in a country like Bangladesh, which is lucky to feed itself let alone use its resources to drive economic growth. Yet, this is not the case in much of Africa, where poverty persists even in nations rich with resources.

The current poverty reduction strategies have had limited success. Neo-liberal policies have encouraged high levels of economic growth around the world. In some nations, particularly those of eastern Asia, the result has been to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Even many of these countries, China included, struggle with rising populations that simply move the bar every time more people are lifted out of poverty. The OECD promotes a "Social Inclusion" policy that seeks to encourage opportunity, empowerment and security as antecedents of economic development and therefore the capacity to move people out of poverty (Porter & Craig, 2004). Many international bodies and agencies have similar programs, but they all run into problems of a lack of jurisdiction. Participation in neoliberal global organizations is voluntary, and implementation of their ideas remains contingent on good governance. Encouraging governance does not equate to actually development of good governance.

Conclusion

Transformational leadership is critical to the eradication of poverty. There are hundreds of organizations large and small working to eliminate poverty, but these groups are often not united in terms of how they define poverty, much less how to tackle the problem. This lack of vision and cohesion reduces the effectiveness of poverty reduction strategies, but it does not need to be this way. Transformational leaders inspire those around them to innovate, to push through obstacles and to unite around a common cause. Transformational leaders are the ones who can inspire new approaches and creative solutions, something needed to resolve world poverty given the ineffectiveness of current approaches in much of the world. The transactional approach has failed to resolve many of the antecedents of poverty -- high birth rates, conflict, instability and poor governance. It will take greater heights of thinking and inspiration to resolve such issues and truly set the world on a course of poverty elimination, and this requires transformational leadership.

References:

Antrobus, P. (2000). Transformational leadership: Advancing the agenda for gender justice. Gender and Development. Vol. 8 (3) 50-56.

Bass, B. & Riggio, R. (2006). Transformational Leadership. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Deaton, A. (2001). Counting the world's poor: Problems and possible solutions. The World Bank Research Observer. Vol. 16 (2) 125-147.

Porter, D. & Craig, D. (2004). The third way and the third world: Poverty reduction and social inclusion in the rise of inclusive liberalism. Review of International Political Economy. Vol. 11 (2) 387-423.

Shah, A. (2013). Poverty facts and stats. Global Issues. Retrieved October 17, 2013 from http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

Townsend, P. (2003). World poverty: New policies to defeat an old enemy. Social Policy. Retrieved October 17, 2013 from http://socialpolicy.ucc.ie/misc/presentations/Peter_Townsend_Ireland-21%20November-2003.pdf