Economics of Poverty

In this world of plenty, almost half the world’s six billion people live on two dollars a day or less. Between one third and one half suffer under nutrition due to insufficient intake of calories, protein or critical micronutrients such as vitamin A, iodine and iron. More than one child in five lives in acute poverty, an especially disturbing fact to this father of five. Why does such unnecessary injustice continue to disfigure a rich, technologically advanced world and what can be done to care for the poor and thereby to care for and honor God, as the Gospels instruct us? We are called to feed the hungry, nurse the sick, and clothe the naked. The impulse to assist is obviously not unique to Christendom. Nor is it especially the comparative advantage of economics, for the instinct of economists is to look beyond the symptoms of poverty that indisputably demand prompt humanitarian response, and to seek instead the causal mechanisms that perpetuate poverty. In reflecting on the economics of poverty, the authors focus is, therefore not on how best to run humanitarian operations but, rather, on the big picture mechanisms that necessitate the grim but honorable and too-necessary work of humanitarian relief agencies.