Cycle
of
Poverty
The World Bank announced that the Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) of reducing the number of people living in extreme
poverty by half has already been met, five years ahead
of schedule.
Now, as we look ahead to what follows after the 2015
deadline for the MDGs, leaders like World Bank President Jim Yong Kim have
articulated a new goal: Eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.
We should be so ambitious as to send extreme poverty the way of smallpox and
polio.
The $1/person/day measure of extreme poverty (since
recalibrated to $1.25/person) has been a useful "bumper sticker"
communications device for drawing attention to the estimated 1.2 billion people
living in conditions of extreme poverty.
But, as with any generalization about a billion of
anything, it is too broad to frame our coming challenges.
To make meaningful progress on a 2030 goal, we will
have to focus on the 300-400 million people who live in
"ultra-poverty."
They struggle to survive on the equivalent of
$0.50-$1.00/day. They lack productive assets and, as a matter of survival, must
prioritize daily consumption over longer-term investment in savings or starting
their own businesses.
People living in ultra-poverty are too poor even for
small micro-credit loans, and are frequently overlooked by government poverty
programs and large international poverty organizations.
Reaching them - and helping ensure that post-2015
goals are realistic - won't be easy. They are physically hard to reach. Eighty
percent of the ultrapoor live on the fringes of remote,rural
villages in the developing world.
You reach them after long drives that begin on
four-lane highways that turn to two, turn to one, then to gravel, then to dust.
At the end of the road, the face that will almost
always greet you will be a woman's. Eighty percent of the
ultrapoor are women and many of them are mothers. It's
likely that she'll be indigenous or
come from an ethnic minority. In many cases, she may have a disability.
She is confronted by the enduring legacy of life
without access to education and the threat of sudden illness without recourse.
She faces exclusion from the social ties of her community and the economic
opportunities of local markets. Living hand to mouth, she and her family often
don't have enough to eat.
Hunger runs deep, all the way to dignity, and she
may put an empty pot over a fire in front of her home to hide her hunger from
her neighbors.
In India, her name is Sushila
Phulbargia, in Guatemala, Magdalena Tambiz, in West Africa, Aminata Porgo.
And when you see her face, what you may expect to find there is all this -- the
mark of an intense poverty.
But you won't.
What's there instead is
a fierce
tenacity, resilience, and perseverance.
When the United Nations meets in September 2015 to
tally the final results on its Millennium Development Goals, it's likely that
the ultrapoor will stand as the population with the least progress out of
poverty.
They need the attention -- now -- of policy makers,
funders, nonprofits and others committed to rooting out extreme poverty at its
deepest levels. As it formalizes its post-2015 agenda, the UN's new bumper
sticker is "leave no one behind."
It's the right message.
When we have collectively helped hundreds of
millions of people move out of profound conditions of poverty and
vulnerability, then we will have truly eradicated extreme poverty at every
level.
World's Poorest Countries
The rankings below were published in the United
Nation's 2011 Human Development Report and reflect the countries with the
lowest human development.
1. Congo (Democratic Republic of the)
|
22. Rwanda
|
2. Niger
|
23. Djibouti
|
3. Burundi
|
24. Zambia
|
4. Mozambique
|
25. Comoros
|
5. Chad
|
26. Togo
|
6. Liberia
|
27. Uganda
|
7. Burkina Faso
|
28. Lesotho
|
8. Sierra Leone
|
29. Mauritania
|
9. Central African Republic
|
30. Haiti
|
10. Guinea
|
31. Nepal
|
11. Eritrea
|
32. Nigeria
|
12. Guinea-Bissau
|
33. Senegal
|
13. Mali
|
34. Yemen
|
14. Ethiopia
|
35. Papua New Guinea
|
15. Zimbabwe
|
36. Tanzania, United Republic of
|
16. Afghanistan
|
37. Madagascar
|
17. Malawi
|
38. Cameroon
|
18. Côte d'lvoire
|
39. Myanmar
|
19. Sudan
|
40. Angola
|
20. Gambia
|
41. Timor-Leste
|
21. Benin
|
42. Bangladesh
|
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