Global Poverty: A Long-Term Approach
Reginald Williams
Department of Philosophy
Bakersfield College
1801 Panorama Drive
Bakersfield, CA 93305
rwilliam@bakersfieldcollege.edu
1. Introduction
I wish I did not feel the need to write this paper. I would like to believe that
current theories on how to combat global poverty adequately address the problem. I do
not believe this. At best, these theories seem to combat global poverty in the short run,
offering little advice on how to reduce it in the long run. Moreover, lacking an adequate
sense of how to reduce global poverty in the long run, I take global poverty theorists to
have overlooked an important moral basis for thinking that affluent nations should reduce
it.
This paper begins by assessing two of the most prominent approaches to
combating global poverty: those of Singer and Pogge. I then argue that if we see humans
as having a right not to be severely poor a la Pogge, we should believe (i) that the world’s
severely poor should be relocated to nearby societies with existing infrastructure which
can be expanded and (ii) that affluent nations should finance this as much as they can.
My argument turns on an analogy, according to which the world’s severely poor should
be seen as economic refugees and thus assisted in relocating to societies that can best
respect their right not to be so poor.
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2. The Problem and Current ‘Solutions’
Approximately 40% of humanity is severely poor, living below the World Bank’s
poverty line of $2/day. In addition, 50,000 people die prematurely every day from
poverty-related causes, such as preventable disease.i And more people have died in just
the last 15 years because of poverty than died in all of the wars, genocides, and other
‘government repressions’ of the 20th century combined.ii
These figures are important because they underscore the gravity of global
poverty; this problem demands a solution. The first figure, however, leads Singer and
Pogge to believe that global poverty can be eradicated more easily than it can be. Given
the World Bank’s rendering of poverty, Singer cites a UN estimate that as of 2006, severe
poverty could have been eradicated for $121 billion/year, with the cost rising to $189
billion/year by 2015.iii Pogge contends that approximately $300 billion/year is needed.iv
Singer’s solution to global poverty turns on charity. He argues, famously, that as
one should jump into a pond to rescue a drowning child, since one stands to do much
good at little cost to oneself, financially secure citizens of the world should, for the same
reason, donate a percentage of their income to charity.v Pogge, by contrast, sees affluent
nations as obligated to change their production and trade policies because they are largely
responsible for global poverty.
Pogge also proposes a tax on the sale of natural
resources—his ‘Global Resources Dividend’—with the proceeds going to combat
poverty.vi
As David Schweickart points out, though, Singer’s and Pogge’s estimates for
eradicating global poverty do not seem to account for all of its aspects.vii Singer’s
approach presupposes the UN’s Millennium goals, which only identify five aspects of
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global poverty: disease, hunger, clean water shortages, infant mortality, and educational
deficiencies.viii Singer thus does not seem to appreciate other factors which contribute to
poverty in long run. Without sustainable housing and employment, for instance, the
world’s severely poor will remain poor.
Pogge, in turn, states:
Accepting [his recommended] reforms, affluent countries would bear some opportunity
costs of making the international trade, lending, investment, and intellectual-property
regimes fairer to the global poor as well as some costs of compensating for harms done—
for example by helping to fund basic health facilities, vaccination programs, basic
schooling, school lunches, safe water and sewage systems, basic housing, power plants
and networks, banks and microlending, road, rail, and communication links where these
do not yet exist.ix
Though Pogge’s estimate for eradicating global poverty is higher than Singer’s, the essay
from which this quote is taken does not explain how $300 billion/year would finance all
of these reforms. Moreover, in the chapter which he cites in the context of this very
quote, Pogge says that his Global Resources Dividend would raise 39 times as much as
current aid, which could be used ‘exclusively toward meeting the basic needs of the
global poor’—i.e., ‘basic education, basic health, population programs, water supply, and
sanitation’ (emphasis added).x
Roger Riddell has argued, powerfully, that foreign aid does more good in the
short run than in the long run:
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The benefits of much official aid have been predominately due to its successes in
addressing short-term, gap-filling needs. There have often been major difficulties in
achieving longer-term sustainability for many aid-funded projects and programmes.
Similarly, while a large number of [NGO] projects and programmes have achieved their
short-term objectives, far fewer have been successful in achieving or contributing to
broader goals and outcomes in a lasting way.xi
Riddell identifies several reasons that aid succeeds in the short run more than in
the long run. Two, however, are salient here. First, the governments and political
environments of the world’s poorest regions often impede the long-term effectiveness of
aid; indeed, many experts take foreign governments and politics to represent the primary
obstacle to reducing global poverty.xii And if this is true, sending aid to these regions is
not the way to combat global poverty. Second, Riddell argues that aid often does not
succeed in the long run because the regions that receive it lack the infrastructure to build
on its short-term benefits.xiii
These observations have philosophical purchase when
considered vis-à-vis Pogge’s claim that not being severely poor is a basic human right.xiv
Without sufficient infrastructure, a region that benefits from aid in the short run
will not continue to benefit as one would hope. For a simple example, vaccinating
children against disease will promote long-term health only if sufficient hospitals are
present in the region to keep these persons healthy later in life—and, in turn, only if
sufficient medical supplies and training continues to be available in the area, only if
ample facilities and trade partnerships exist to provide the area with such supplies, only if
sufficient teachers of medicine remain available to train local doctors, etc. The world’s
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severely poor, however, tend to live in regions which lack the infrastructure needed to
sustain the benefits of aid. In fact, Riddell contends:
[T]he higher levels of aid provided to fund the recurrent costs of the major service
delivery ministries, such as the payment of salaries and the purchase of books and
medicines, the less aid is available to help boost long-term development—for instance, to
help expand and enhance the quality of the basic infrastructure, to strength institutions
and capacities, and to help create a more favourable environment for more sustainable
wealth creation.xv
It is imperative that hungry people be fed, that thirsty people receive water, and so
forth, hence Singer’s and Pogge’s insight. But nourishing the world’s severely poor is
like bandaging a persistent cutter: It is necessary in the short run but not a long-term
solution. To combat global poverty in the long run, we must enable people to work, to
maintain a residence—in short, to become part of a functioning society.
And this
requires infrastructure: buildings, institutions, transportation, employers, industry, etc.
The question, then, is how best to enable the world’s severely poor to become part of a
functioning society and what is the moral basis for doing so. I take Pogge to provide the
beginnings of an answer.
3. A New Approach
Pogge contends that, as humans have a right not to be tortured, they have a right
not to be severely poor when such poverty is due to structural economic policies, or
‘institutional orders’, which ‘foreseeably and avoidably’ deprive them of ‘secure access
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to some of the objects of [their] human rights’—e.g., food or clean water.xvi Pogge holds
this view for two joint reasons. First, he accepts the platitude that if one has a right to
something, others have a duty not to violate this right, indeed to ensure as much as
possible that one has access to the object of it.
Second, Pogge believes that his
understanding of people’s right not to be severely poor accurately identifies those who
are violating this right: ‘those who participate in imposing social institutions’ which
‘foreseeably and avoidably’ render people severely poor (e.g., certain CEOs of
multinational corporations or political leaders of affluent nations).xvii
I appreciate that Pogge conceives of humans’ right not to be severely poor such
that specific people and nations can be faulted for violating it. I, however, believe that
Pogge fails to pursue a philosophically interesting implication of his own thinking about
poverty: that once we see severe poverty as a human rights violation, affluent nations
should perhaps address this violation as conscientious nations have addressed other such
violations. Affluent nations should perhaps open their borders to those whose economic
rights are being violated and take these persons in as economic refugees a la political or
war refugees.
My case here is a parity argument:
When conscientious nations recognize significant international human rights violations,
they open their borders to the victims as much as they can, accommodating the victims as
refugees, granting them asylum, making them part of their societies, extending various
rights and privileges to them, etc. So if Pogge is correct and humans have a right not to
be severely poor, the daily 50,000 preventable deaths due to poverty would seem to
violate this right enough to warrant, by parity of reason, that conscientious nations with
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adequate resources accommodate the world’s severely poor and make them part of their
societies as well.
This view has at least three advantages. First, by removing the world’s severely
poor from the regions in which they are poor, my proposal avoids sending aid to
governments and political environments that impede long-term poverty reduction.
Second, my proposal avoids an important objection that Pogge realizes his treatment of
poverty faces—namely, that affluent nations, corporations, and the like should not be
held responsible for, or bear the burden of, reducing global poverty because their
behavior and policies would not be correlated with it ‘if the national governments and
elites of the poor countries were genuinely committed to “good governance” and poverty
eradication’.xviii My view avoids this objection, as it would be most odd for a nation to
take in refugees and be responsible for the strife from which it seeks to liberate them.
Nations which take in refugees do so because an exigent problem exists: Human rights
are being violated.
Rather than debating who is responsible for the violation,
conscientious nations with adequate resources step up and take in as many victims as they
can, so as to solve the problem.
Third, my approach to combating global poverty would integrate the world’s
severely poor, as much as possible, into established societies which possess the sort of
infrastructure which Riddell stresses is vital to reducing poverty: effective governments,
functioning economies, existing water and sewer lines, hospitals and schools which could
be expanded instead of established, . . . .
It is again imperative that hungry children be fed, that the ill be treated, that the
illiterate learn to read, etc. Though I hate to see a child go hungry or be ill, I realize that
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feeding or treating one in the short run will mean that one later needs shelter, that one
will likely go on to reproduce, that one will not only need to read but to acquire job skills
and a job.xix All of this requires that one lives in a society with adequate housing,
neonatal care, schools, and employment opportunities—which, in turn, requires raw
materials and production plants, skilled laborers who can maintain and expand
infrastructure, a sustainable economy in which to work. But many, if not most, of the
world’s severely poor live in regions with scant infrastructure. And when infrastructure
is established in these regions, it is primitive compared to that of developed societies,
leaving the severely poor vulnerable in the long run.
Rather than spending billions of dollars establishing infrastructure in poor,
undeveloped regions, this money would seem better spent on relocating the world’s
severely poor to regions with the developed infrastructure they need to overcome poverty
in the long run, and on expanding this infrastructure so it can accommodate the influx of
people. For it is less expensive to expand existing infrastructure than to establish it anew.
Furthermore, if Pogge is correct and severe poverty represents a human rights violation, it
would seem that conscientious affluent nations should open their borders to the world’s
severely poor as much as they have political and war refugees. The moral grounds for
allowing political and war refugees to immigrate to established societies—in particular,
the prospects of their needlessly dying otherwise—should extend to economic refugees
who will die without intervention.
There is, however, a serious problem with my
proposal.
Theoretically speaking, I think that affluent nations should open their borders as
much as they can to the world’s severely poor. Since global poverty is a topic in
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‘practical ethics’, though, work on it must stand to have purchase in actually combating
poverty. And most of the world’s severely poor cannot realistically relocate to affluent
nations. Such nations (e.g., the US) tend to be too distant from the world’s severely poor
regions (e.g., Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa). These areas also tend to have
vastly different cultures; even their languages typically differ.
Given these practical considerations, what should be done about global poverty?
What should affluent nations do to assist those whose right not to be severely poor is
being violated?
If Pogge is correct in thinking that severe poverty constitutes a human rights
violation; if I am justified in inferring that, ideally, affluent nations would take in the
world’s severely poor as economic refugees and provide them with the infrastructure
needed to overcome poverty in the long run; and if, realistically, affluent nations cannot
take in many of the world’s severely poor because these nations tend to be too distant and
different from the poorest parts of the world—a plausible alternative would seem to be
that affluent nations should finance the relocation of the severely poor to nearby cities
and towns which have similar cultures and at least some infrastructure. And affluent
nations should finance the expansion of this infrastructure, along with a variety of social
programs, so the affected societies can accommodate the influx of immigrants.
This approach to combating global poverty seems like a natural extension of
Pogge’s claim that severe poverty constitutes a human rights violation, but it better
squares with Riddell’s insight that poverty can be overcome in the long run only if people
live in regions with adequate infrastructure. This approach is also more realistic than
trying to move poor people across the world. This approach even stands to improve how
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affluent nations are seen around the world, and to have economic advantages for them.
For by helping a society expand its infrastructure, affluent nations would help it be more
productive and financially secure—which, in turn, would build international relations and
perhaps even lead to mutually beneficial trade agreements.
So I take my proposal for combating global poverty to have strengths. It does,
however, face five objections that are worth considering by way of conclusion; four
theoretical objections, one practical.
4. Objections and Replies
First, one could question the status of the moral duty that I take affluent nations to
have to reduce global poverty. Indeed, one could object that my basis for thinking that
affluent nations should reduce global poverty is weaker in principle than Pogge’s. For
Pogge provides grounds for thinking that affluent nations are obligated to reduce global
poverty, since their behavior and policies are largely responsible for it in the first place.
One could object that I show it to be merely laudable or supererogatory for affluent
nations to reduce global poverty. For while it is laudable of conscientious nations to take
in political or war refugees whose human rights are being violated, such nations are not
obligated to do so, assuming that they have not contributed to the violations.
While I appreciate Pogge’s attempt to prove affluent nations responsible for
global poverty and thus obligated to reduce it, I again see his understanding of this
obligation and its moral basis as problematic. In at least some instances, it is even more
difficult than I earlier indicated to establish what is most responsible for severe poverty:
the behavior and policies of affluent nations or other factors, such as bad leadership in a
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poor region.
Pogge, as noted, addresses the objection that affluent nations are not
responsible for reducing global poverty because their behavior and policies would not be
correlated with it ‘if the national governments and elites of the poor countries were
genuinely committed to “good governance” and poverty eradication’. Riddell, however,
implies that assisting a poor country will reduce severe poverty only if its government and
‘elites’ are committed to the cause.xx
If bad leadership in a region is even sometimes more responsible for its poverty
than is the behavior and policies of affluent nations, then according to Pogge’s argument,
affluent nations would not seem obligated to reduce this poverty. Given this possibility,
along with Riddell’s insight above, I think it important to identify moral grounds for
believing that affluent nations should reduce as much global poverty as they can, even if
they are not responsible for all of it, and even if they are not strictly obligated to reduce
all of it. I consider this more important than debating which instances of global poverty
affluent nations are primarily responsible for and thus obligated to reduce. Moreover, if
we need to prioritize who among the world’s severely poor should receive the assistance
of affluent nations, or how much assistance various regions should receive, I would argue
that our criterion should be whose severe poverty is most severe, not whose poverty is
most the result of contemptible behavior and economic policies of affluent nations. In
short, I would rather see more lives saved and given long-term promise than see affluent
nations reduce less poverty for which they are more responsible.
Second, one could accuse my argument of suffering from a serious theoretical
confusion. For I again argue that affluent nations should but are not obligated to reduce
global poverty, and my case builds on Pogge’s claim that not being severely poor is a
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basic human right. As noted, though, Pogge himself endorses the platitude that rights
entail obligations. So one could object that I must either reject Pogge’s view that people
have a right not to be severely poor (in which case my argument loses its foundation) or
see certain nations as obligated to ensure that people not be severely poor.
This
objection, however, seems to beg the question against my argument.
The point of my analogy is that there is an established sense in which we speak of
‘human rights’, specifically of ‘human rights violations’, according to which an agent or
nation should do something important, indeed paramount, without having a strict
obligation to do so. When the human rights of political or war refugees are violated,
those who commit the violations are guilty of violating their ethical obligations. We do
not, however, see nations which take in such refugees as obligated to do so. These
nations should take in the refugees—it is vital that they do so, lest the refugees suffer or
die—but these nations have presumably done nothing to generate an obligation to take in
refugees. The objection above, then, does not show this established sense of ‘rights’ to
be implausible. And without doing so, it begs the question.
Third, one could object that my argument proves little because at best it provides
a moral basis for thinking that conscientious affluent nations should assist the world’s
severely poor; it does not provide an account of why affluent nations should be
conscientious, of what makes an affluent nation conscientious, or of what is wrong with
an affluent nation’s not assisting the world’s severely poor, given that it does not purport
to be conscientious. According to this objection, my argument stands to establish the
hypothetical imperative ‘If an affluent nation wants to be conscientious, it should assist
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the world’s severely poor’, not the moral imperative that affluent nations simpliciter must
assist the world’s severely poor.
I, however, take Pogge to provide a plausible account of what, minimally, makes
an affluent nation conscientious: its respecting people’s rights. I also take Pogge to
provide a plausible minimal account of what is wrong with an affluent nation’s not being
conscientious and assisting the world’s severely poor: its inadequately considering their
basic human right not to be severely poor, which as such must transcend national borders.
I just take Pogge to provide an inadequate account of how best to respect people’s right
not to be severely poor, and of why a nation should concern itself with a case of severe
poverty for which it is not responsible, hence the need for this investigation.
Fourth, one could object that I have said nothing about how the money should be
raised to relocate the world’s severely poor and to expand the infrastructure of the
societies to which I would move them. I have argued that affluent nations should finance
this, but exactly how? The reason I have not elaborated on this is simple: The literature
contains several complementary ways of funding my proposals. Singer’s call to charity
and Pogge’s Global Resources Dividend could both generate funds to relocate the
world’s severely poor. Gillian Brock has recently surveyed some additional strategies—
e.g., a tax on the use of energy sources which emit carbon dioxide and France’s recent
airline ticket tax.xxi Given this literature, I think the important question is how any such
funds should be used to reduce long-term poverty and what the moral basis is for
allocating them thus, hence my focus.
Fifth, and finally, one could question the practical feasibility of my approach to
combating global poverty. Specifically, one could ask: Given my skepticism of Singer’s
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and Pogge’s estimated costs of eradicating global poverty, and given my reasons for
thinking it impractical for affluent nations to take in the world’s severely poor, how likely
is it that affluent nations could afford to relocate the world’s severely poor to nearby
societies and to expand their infrastructure, so as to accommodate the influx of residents?
Furthermore, insofar as the world’s severely poor could be relocated to nearby societies
with expanded infrastructure, how likely is it that the new neighborhoods of these
immigrants would not degenerate into ghettos filled with unemployment, poverty, even
crime?
These questions are important. I do not consider my view free of practical
difficulties, and they need to be resolved for my view to be viable. Ultimately, though,
resolving these difficulties would require economic research that is beyond the scope of
this paper. The hope is that by proposing a way of combating global poverty which is
more mindful of the long-term than are current approaches, this paper will motivate
research which can verify its practical feasibility. Two additional replies, however, can
be made to this objection.
First, if Riddell is correct and current approaches to combating global poverty
tend to fail in the long run, then even if affluent nations can only afford to relocate some
of the world’s severely poor and to expand the infrastructure of some nearby societies,
insofar as affluent nations can finance any such relocations and expansions, they will
stand to reduce global poverty more effectively in the long run than do current
approaches.
Second, although relocating the world’s severely poor would create
neighborhoods that are poor compared to others in the societies which take them in, these
neighborhoods would be considerably better off than are those from which I would have
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these people liberated. So long as the residents of such neighborhoods understood how
improved their lives and long-term prospects would be by moving—e.g., through quality
educational programs—I presume that they would appreciate their new neighborhoods
and the opportunities afforded them.
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i
Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 2.
ii
Thomas Pogge, ‘Real World Justice’. Journal of Ethics 9 (2005), pp. 31.
iii
See ‘What should a Billionaire Give—and What Should You?’ New York Times, December 17, 2006.
iv
Pogge, ‘World Poverty’, p. 3.
v
See Practical Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 229-232 & 241-246.
vi
See ‘World Poverty’, p. 19.
vii
See ‘Global Poverty: Alternative Perspectives of What We Should Do—and Why’. Journal of Social
Philosophy 39 (2008), 471-479.
viii
Ibid., 472.
See ‘Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation’. Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right ed.
ix
Thomas Pogge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp.28.
x
‘World Poverty’, p. 213.
xi
See Does Foreign Aid Really Work? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). pp. 253-4.
xii
See ‘Foreign Aid’, p. 357-358.
xiii
Ibid., 372 & 378.
xiv
See ‘Severe Poverty’, p. 14-15.
xv
See ‘Foreign Aid’, p. 378.
xvi
See ‘Severe Poverty’, p. 15 & 24.
xvii
Ibid., 14.
xviii
Ibid., 46.
xix
For a more bold formulation of this point, see Garrett Hardin, ‘Carrying Capacity as an Ethical Concept’,
in Christine Koggel ed. Moral Issues in Global Perspective (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press,
1999)., pp. 462-68.
xx
According to Riddell, again, many experts consider the governments and political environments of the
world’s poorest regions to be the primary obstacle to reducing global poverty. See ‘Foreign Aid’, p. 357358.
xxi
See Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 130-135.
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