poverty

25 September 2015

Posted on September 25, 2015 Leave a Comment

The World Bank’s chief economist Kaushik Basu’s “Measuring poverty in a rapidly changing world” tells us that the Bank will soon adjust its measure of global extreme poverty. The new metric would capture changes in living standards and consider more poverty dimensions than money. The Financial Times gives us more. The global poverty line is expected to rise from $1.25/person/day to $1.92/person/day, bringing the total number of extreme poor to 1.158 billion with larger shares in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. How many of these would be children? A formal announcement will be made at the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in 2 weeks and more refinements should come out of Basu’s Commission on poverty next April. Watch that space.

The Pope is in town. Traffic is paralyzed. We are “working from home”. A couple of months ago, I read this and that, and tried to convince a few colleagues and friends that we had reached Peak Pope. I failed. Indeed, the lovefest is still on. Development organizations are more and more eager to work with religious actors. While lack of trust and understanding persists at both ends, motivations can align and collaboration lead to progress even on sensitive issues such as female genital mutilation or child marriage. And related to this, find three write-ups killing myths about child marriage and Islam, here, here, and here.

My map of the week is The Economist’s “Boundary fences and walls worldwide”. We referenced this map, originally found in Courrier International, in our 2015 “predictions” to highlight the growing number of walls and fences being erected to block migration and terrorism. This trend is accompanied by a globalization of the fortified fence market estimated at $17 billion in 2011. What a paradox.

My quote of the week is from Yogi Berra: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”.

28 August 2015

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Sherwood’s “Human rights groups face global crackdown ‘not seen in a generation’” reports a shrinking civic space in a growing number of countries. Oxfam and Civicus also ring alarm bells and Amnesty International plans to launch a campaign to protect NGOs next year. 60 countries have passed laws to restrict NGOs’ activities over the past 3 years with India, China, Russia, Egypt, Uganda, and Cambodia being the most recent. The main forces being this trend: less aid and influence from the West, governments’ growing fear of uncontrollable uprisings, and proliferation of counter-terrorism measures.

The Economist‘s “Why the UN does not pay its interns” explains just that. It follows the buzz created by the story of David Hyde who interning with the UN in Geneva slept in a tent because he could not afford a rent with an unpaid internship. [It turns out that the story was entirely plotted to shed light on the disapproved UN rules…] I have interns in my team yearlong and believe that their work should be paid. As a first step, let’s align with the ILO and FAO who offer stipends to cover for interns’ living expenditures?

My graph this week is from Diamond’s “How we die in the US versus how people die abroad”. It compares causes of death in high-income and low-income countries: heart diseases, strokes and lower respiratory infections kill rich and poor. And life expectancy at birth averages 81 years for the rich versus 59 for the poor.

My quote of the week is from Putnam at the Aspen Ideas Festival where he talks about his latest (great) book Our Kids: “The costs to the whole society of a generation of 25 million poor kids in America are estimated at roughly, over their lifetime, 5 trillion dollars. […] The most important reason why it is in our interest to help those poor kids is that our economy will grow more rapidly if we make use of the talents that are currently not being used because these poor kids are not being put in a position to advance. […] We are moving towards an America where being affluent and being poor is inherited.” [13’24”]

5 June 2015

Posted on June 5, 2015 Leave a Comment

AfDB and Gates’ Delivering on the promise: Leveraging natural resources to accelerate human development in Africa is a good read. It basically looks at how revenues from oil, minerals and gas could contribute to education, health and social protection in Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. With no surprise, estimates are high, e.g., they could cover half of the health and education needs of Ghana for the next decade. The paper does not just look at how to get cash from extractives but also at how to get the industry invest more in human capital, e.g., developing local skillsets. What struck me then was the absence of discussion on safeguards and rights (the words are not even used). Shouldn’t the first investment in human capital be to-do-no-harm? This was all the more striking as the paper came on my radar, today, at the same time as the UNICEF-sponsored Guardian post on Identifying the impacts of the extractives industry on children.

NYU David Steven’s Time to Deliver the Post-2015 Agenda’s Promises to Children presents a short and powerful story around 4 core promises for children. It caught my attention because I am returning from a short stint with UNICEF Indonesia to work on a short narrative on children that connects to, but trims the fat of the SDG agenda. What struck me in David’s piece was the omission of “ending child poverty” in the list of promises. We did put it in our Indonesian list. I asked him why. He replied that the multidimensional poverty measure would be partially captured in his four promises. Fair. He also felt that the income poverty measure (which is what I was hinting at) would get “mixed up in the broader challenge of ensuring all ages are above this threshold” and would prefer to leave it out. I really like his commitment to keeping things lean and on par, but I would keep poverty in.

My graph of the week is from The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 because of the online argument it started between Yale University Thomas Pogge and FAO quants, the former accusing the latter of a flawed methodology that underestimates the magnitude of undernourishment. A solid disagreement is always a good place to learn. This one illustrates the power of data from the decision to what gets collected, to what gets estimated, to how it gets used.

My quote of the week is from Madeleine Albright at the Chicago Forum on Global Cities [10’45’’]: “People talk to their government on 21^st century technology, the government hears them on 20^th century technology and is giving 19^th century responses”.