Poverty Reduction Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Poverty Reduction. Here they are! All 52 of them:

One additional unit of income can do a hundred times as much to the benefit the extreme poor as it can to benefit you or I [earning the typical US wage of $28,000 or ‎£18,000 per year]. [I]t's not often you have two options, one of which is a hundred times better than the other. Imagine a happy hour where you could either buy yourself a beet for $5 or buy someone else a beer for 5¢. If that were the case, we'd probably be pretty generous – next round's on me! But that's effectively the situation we're in all the time. It's like a 99% off sale, or buy one, get ninety-nine free. It might be the most amazing deal you'll see in your life.
William MacAskill (Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference)
The welfare state contributes to this disparity by (1) reducing the need for people at the bottom to earn income and (2) by penalizing their earning of income, since higher income leads to a reduction in eligibility for government benefits.
Thomas Sowell (Wealth, Poverty and Politics)
The rest of us, on the ·other hand-we members of the protected classes-have grown increasingly· dependent on our welfare programs. In 2020 the federal government spent more than $193 billion on homeowner subsidies, a figure that far exceeded the amount spent on direct housing assistance for low income families ($53 billion). Most families who enjoy those subsidies have six-figure incomes and are white. Poor families lucky enough to live in government-owned apartments of often have to deal with mold and even lead paint, while rich families are claiming the mortgage interest deduction on first and second homes. The lifetime limit for cash welfare to poor parents is five years, but families claiming the mortgage interest deduction may do so for the length of the mortgage, typically thirty years. A fifteen-story public housing tower and a mortgaged suburban home are both government subsidized, but only one looks (and feels) that way. If you count all public benefits offered by the federal government, America's welfare state (as a share of its gross domestic product) is the second biggest in the world, after France's. But that's true only if you include things like government-subsidized retirement benefits provided by employers, student loans and 529 college savings plans, child tax credits, and homeowner subsidies: benefits disproportionately flowing to Americans well above the poverty line. If you put aside these tax breaks and judge the United States solely by the share of its GDP allocated to programs directed at low-income citizens, then our investment in poverty reduction is much smaller than that of other rich nations. The American welfare state is lopsided.
Matthew Desmond (Poverty, by America)
One-third of the world’s poorest 1.2 billion people live in India where 1.4 million children die before their fifth birthday—making this the highest percentage in the world. Despite a reduction in the official poverty figures and an improvement in various human development indices, one in four children is still malnourished and 3,000 children die every day from poverty. This is the India that we would prefer not to see, the India that inconveniently comes in the way of slogans and news headlines of India Shining, India galloping forward, India being welcomed to exclusive clubs of the world’s rich and powerful nations.
Barkha Dutt (This Unquiet Land: Stories from India's Fault Lines)
The biblical way to help people rise out of poverty is through wealth creation, not wealth redistribution. For lasting results, we must offer the poor a hand up, not merely a handout. You spell long-term poverty reduction “j-o-b-s.” Training and tools liberate people. Trade, not aid, builds the prosperity of nations.
Wayne Grudem (The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution)
In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than a repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation. The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries--television, radio, video, music. Like all Americans, African Americans are influenced greatly by the images of comfort. These images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values--love, care, service to others--handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward of self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America.
Cornel West
Different studies suggest different dietary changes in response to climate change, but the ballpark is pretty clear. The most comprehensive assessment of the livestock industry’s environmental impact was published in Nature in October 2018. After analyzing food-production systems from every country around the world, the authors concluded that while undernourished people living in poverty across the globe could actually eat a little more meat and dairy, the average world citizen needs to shift to a plant-based diet in order to prevent catastrophic, irreversible environmental damage. The average U.S. and U.K. citizen must consume 90 percent less beef and 60 percent less dairy. How would anyone keep track of that? No animal products for breakfast or lunch. It might not amount to precisely the reductions that are asked for, but it’s just about right, and easy to remember.
Jonathan Safran Foer (We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast)
Note that the best rationalizations are those that have an element of truth. Whether you vote or not will almost certainly have no influence on the outcome of an election. Nor will the amount of carbon you personally put into the atmosphere make a difference in the fate of the planet. And perhaps it really should be up to governments rather than the charities that are soliciting your contributions to feed the hungry and homeless in America or save children around the world from crushing poverty and abuse. But the fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior. This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil—an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions... [The] process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise.
Thomas Gilovich (The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights)
In English she described her lifelong schism with her half-sister’s side of the family: the clandestine upbringing by an unwed mother; her hatred for a father who failed to acknowledge her; a drab, anxious childhood of charity shops and free lunches, resentment sharpening her into an arrow aimed toward a UN career in poverty reduction; and the day her father died and bequeathed to her half a
C Pam Zhang (Land of Milk and Honey)
Hispanic and African American neighborhoods had been targeted by the subprime lending industry: renters were lured into buying bad mortgages, and homeowners were encouraged to refinance under riskier terms. Then it all came crashing down. Between 2007 and 2010, the average white family experienced an 11 percent reduction in wealth, but the average black family lost 31 percent of its wealth. The average Hispanic family lost 44 percent.
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
The total amount of evil in any system remains constant. Hence, any diminution in one direction - for instance, a reduction in poverty or unemployment - is accompanied by an increase in another, e.g., crime or air pollution.
Charles P. Issawi
The powerful effect of female literacy contrasts with the comparatively ineffective roles of, say, male literacy or general poverty reduction as instruments of child mortality reduction. The increase in male literacy over the same range (from 22 to 75 percent) only reduces under-five mortality from 169 per thousand to 141 per thousand. And a 50 percent reduction in the incidence of poverty (from the actual 1981 level) only reduces the predicted value of under-five mortality from 156 per thousand to 153 per thousand. Here again, the message seems to be that some variables relating to women's agency (in this case, female literacy) often play a much more important role in promoting social well-being (in particular, child survival) than variables relating to the general level of opulence in the society. These findings have important practical implications. Both types of variables can be influenced through public action, but respectively require rather different forms of public intervention.
Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom)
What matters most is that we make sure that the most vulnerable, worst-off people living in shantytowns are lifted out of poverty. It is growth, not carbon dioxide reductions, that will prevent the harrowing losses that the world’s poorest endure as a result of hurricanes.
Bjørn Lomborg
If you count all benefits, America’s welfare state (as a share of its gross domestic product) is the second biggest in the world, after France’s. But that’s true only if you include things like government-subsidized retirement benefits provided by employers, student loans and 529 college savings plans, child tax credits, and homeowner subsidies: benefits disproportionately flowing to Americans well above the poverty line. If you put aside these tax breaks and judge the United States solely by the share of its GDP allocated to programs directed at low-income citizens, then our investment in poverty reduction is much smaller than that of other rich nations. The American welfare state is lopsided.[22]
Matthew Desmond (Poverty, by America)
He maketh me to lie down on park benches He leadeth me besides still factories He dist[urbeth] my soul He leadeth me in the paths of destruction For the parties sake Yea, tho I walk thru the Valley of the shadows of depression I anticipate no recovery For he is with me He prepareth a reduction in my salary And in the presence of mine enemies. He anointeth my small income with taxes And my expense runneth over Surely unemployment and poverty shall follow me, All the days of my life and I will live in a mortgaged house forever.
Caroline Fraser (Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder)
Globalization in particular is a tide that is impossible for any ruler to order back. Many of a country’s problems are inherently global, including migration, pandemics, terrorism, cybercrime, nuclear proliferation, rogue states, and the environment. Pretending they don’t exist is not tenable forever, and they can be solved only through international cooperation. Nor can the benefits of globalization—more affordable goods, larger markets for exports, the reduction in global poverty—be denied indefinitely. And with the Internet and inexpensive travel, there will be no stopping the flow of people and ideas (especially, as we will see, among younger people). As for the battle against truth and fact, over the long run they have a built-in advantage: when you stop believing in them, they don’t go away. The deeper question is whether the rise of populist movements, whatever damage they do in the short term, represents the shape of things to come—whether, as a recent Boston Globe editorial lamented/gloated, “The Enlightenment had a good run.” Do the events around 2016 really imply that the world is headed back to the Middle Ages? As with climate change skeptics who claim to be vindicated by a nippy morning, it’s easy to overinterpret recent events.
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
A great liberal betrayal is afoot. Unfortunately, many “fellow-travelers” of Islamism are on the liberal side of this debate. I call them “regressive leftists”; they are in fact reverse racists. They have a poverty of expectation for minority groups, believing them to be homogenous and inherently opposed to human rights values. They are culturally reductive in how they see “Eastern”—and in my case, Islamic—culture, and they are culturally deterministic in attempting to freeze their ideal of it in order to satisfy their orientalist fetish. While they rightly question every aspect of their “own” Western culture in the name of progress, they censure liberal Muslims who attempt to do so within Islam, and they choose to side instead with every regressive reactionary in the name of “cultural authenticity” and anticolonialism. They claim that their reason for refusing to criticize any policy, foreign or domestic—other than those of what they consider “their own” government—is that they are not responsible for other governments’ actions. However, they leap whenever any (not merely their own) liberal democratic government commits a policy error, while generally ignoring almost every fascist, theocratic, or Muslim-led dictatorial regime and group in the world. It is as if their brains cannot hold two thoughts at the same time. Besides, since when has such isolationism been a trait of liberal internationalists? It is a right-wing trait. They hold what they think of as “native” communities—and I use that word deliberately—to lesser standards than the ones they claim apply to all “their” people, who happen to be mainly white, and that’s why I call it reverse racism. In holding “native” communities to lesser—or more culturally “authentic”—standards, they automatically disempower those communities. They stifle their ambitions. They cut them out of the system entirely, because there’s no aspiration left. These communities end up in self-segregated “Muslim areas” where the only thing their members aspire to is being tin-pot community leaders, like ghetto chieftains. The “fellow-travelers” fetishize these “Muslim” ghettos in the name of “cultural authenticity” and identity politics, and the ghetto chieftains are often the leading errand boys for them. Identity politics and the pseudo-liberal search for cultural authenticity result in nothing but a downward spiral of competing medieval religious or cultural assertions, fights over who are the “real” Muslims, ever increasing misogyny, homophobia, sectarianism, and extremism. This is not liberal. Among the left, this is a remnant of the socialist approach that prioritizes group identity over individual autonomy. Among the right, it is ironically a throwback from the British colonial “divide and rule” approach. Classical liberalism focuses on individual autonomy. I refer here to liberalism as it is understood in the philosophical sense, not as it’s understood in the United States to refer to the Democratic Party—that’s a party-political usage. The great liberal betrayal of this generation is that in the name of liberalism, communal rights have been prioritized over individual autonomy within minority groups. And minorities within minorities really do suffer because of this betrayal. The people I really worry about when we have this conversation are feminist Muslims, gay Muslims, ex-Muslims—all the vulnerable and bullied individuals who are not just stigmatized but in many cases violently assaulted or killed merely for being against the norm.
Sam Harris (Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue)
Globalization in particular is a tide that is impossible for any ruler to order back. Many of a country’s problems are inherently global, including migration, pandemics, terrorism, cybercrime, nuclear proliferation, rogue states, and the environment. Pretending they don’t exist is not tenable forever, and they can be solved only through international cooperation. Nor can the benefits of globalization—more affordable goods, larger markets for exports, the reduction in global poverty—be denied indefinitely. And with the Internet and inexpensive travel, there will be no stopping the flow of people and ideas (especially, as we will see, among younger people). As for the battle against truth and fact, over the long run they have a built-in advantage: when you stop believing in them, they don’t go away.
Steven Pinker
By posing climate change as a battle between capitalism and the planet, I am not saying anything that we don't already know. the battle is already under way, but right now capitalism is winning hands down. it wins every time the need for economic growth is used as the excuse for putting off climate action yet again, of for breaking emission reduction commitments already made. it wins when Greeks are told that their only path out of economic crises is to open up their beautiful seas to high-risk oil and gas drilling. it wins when Canadians are told our only hope of not ending unlike Greece is to allow our boreal forests to be flayed so we can access the semisolid bitumen from the Alberta tar sands . it wins when a park in Istanbul is slotted for demolition to make way for yet another shopping mall. it wins when parents in Beijing are told that sending their wheezing kids to school in pollution masks decorated to look like cute cartoon characters is an acceptable price for economic progress. it wins every time we accept that we have only bad choices available to us: austerity or extraction, poisoning or poverty.
Naomi Klein
think of violence in relative terms. “The An Lushan Revolt in China in the eighth century killed thirty-six million people,” continued Seeker. “Greater than ten percent of the world’s population at the time. This would equate to almost a billion deaths today. The Mongol conquests of China in the thirteenth century killed over half a billion by today’s standards. The Fall of Rome, hundreds of millions. “Going back even further, on a per capita basis, early tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as the wars and genocide of the twentieth century. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Wars between modern, westernized countries have all but vanished, and even in the developing world, these wars kill only a fraction of what they did before. Rape, battery, and child abuse are all markedly lower than in earlier times.” Seeker paused. “I could go on, but I think you get the point.” “I’ll be damned,” said Ella in wonder. “This sort of analysis never occurred to me.” “Me either,” said Kagan. “You make a surprisingly compelling case.” “I didn’t invent these arguments,” said Seeker. “Others of your species did. But based on my own reading and analysis, I find them valid. And humanity isn’t just better off in terms of the reduction in violence, but in nearly every other measurable way. Far better off. “Ironically,” continued the AI, “once again, most of you believe the opposite.  In an international poll, ninety percent of respondents said that worldwide poverty has gotten worse in the past thirty years, when, in fact, it has fallen by more than half. Not that your
Douglas E. Richards (Seeker)
set aside more preserves, extinguished fewer species, saved the ozone layer, and peaked in their consumption of oil, farmland, timber, paper, cars, coal, and perhaps even carbon. For all their differences, the world’s nations came to a historic agreement on climate change, as they did in previous years on nuclear testing, proliferation, security, and disarmament. Nuclear weapons, since the extraordinary circumstances of the closing days of World War II, have not been used in the seventy-two years they have existed. Nuclear terrorism, in defiance of forty years of expert predictions, has never happened. The world’s nuclear stockpiles have been reduced by 85 percent, with more reductions to come, and testing has ceased (except by the tiny rogue regime in Pyongyang) and proliferation has frozen. The world’s two most pressing problems, then, though not yet solved, are solvable: practicable long-term agendas have been laid out for eliminating nuclear weapons and for mitigating climate change. For all the bleeding headlines, for all the crises, collapses, scandals, plagues, epidemics, and existential threats, these are accomplishments to savor. The Enlightenment is working: for two and a half centuries, people have used knowledge to enhance human flourishing. Scientists have exposed the workings of matter, life, and mind. Inventors have harnessed the laws of nature to defy entropy, and entrepreneurs have made their innovations affordable. Lawmakers have made people better off by discouraging acts that are individually beneficial but collectively harmful. Diplomats have done the same with nations. Scholars have perpetuated the treasury of knowledge and augmented the power of reason. Artists have expanded the circle of sympathy. Activists have pressured the powerful to overturn repressive measures, and their fellow citizens to change repressive norms. All these efforts have been channeled into institutions that have allowed us to circumvent the flaws of human nature and empower our better angels. At the same time . . . Seven hundred million people in the world today live in extreme poverty. In the regions where they are concentrated, life expectancy is less than 60, and almost a quarter of the people are undernourished.
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
(1 percent of GDP growth results in a 2 percent poverty reduction),
Peter H. Diamandis (Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think)
Shriver brothers Robert and Mark have also found ways to support the family commitment to the disabled. With the musician Bono, Robert helped found DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa), which advocates for the eradication of poverty through education, debt reduction, development assistance, and campaigning for access to treatment for AIDS and malaria in Africa; and Mark serves as senior vice president of U.S. programs for Save the Children. Eunice’s only daughter, Maria Shriver, sits on the boards of Special Olympics and Best Buddies, and
Kate Clifford Larson (Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter)
Most rich nations use their foreign aid budget mainly to employ their own people and to sell their own goods, with poverty reduction as an afterthought. The 25 percent that is spent in Bangladesh usually goes straight to a tiny elite of local suppliers, contractors, consultants, and experts. Much of this money is used by these elites to buy foreign-made consumer goods, which is of no help to our country’s economy or workforce.
Muhammad Yunus (Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty)
Knowing your DUI attorney can eliminate the effect of the return of drunken Driving under the influence of alcohol is a serious offense. It has led to the destruction of countless innocent lives. Including in the United States against the wounded caused countless innocent people, their lives rotation indefinitely. It was carried out connected to the conclusion of households for damage. It has led to a community, the introduction of the unknown nature of the operation of the state, remain concerned with drunken diet. He is optimistic in September, then, that the federal government does not become a frivolous crime. With the repeal of the Step mode, the application of the laws of intoxication and the dishes are made to drunk drivers seem hard regularly. If it difficult to the crime of driving under the influence of alcohol or at least system is the next step in a reliable DUI lawyer, regardless of the guilt or innocence of their weight, protect yourself in the hope of such significant reductions in price, the not confirmed extremely high prices. Sam can throw a lot of money as well, you can get a driver's license, or without, it can be hard to take the prison up to one year. You can avoid because of their own and do not need to get drunk relaxed in the price. As a replacement for all these costs themselves, which is largely a good idea, the help of a DUI lawyer to win? These specialists understand the law and the conditions just mentioned above, compounds containing a labor judge and customer orientation DWI. DUI lawyers can be reduced to a constructive trust or even eliminate visibility into force. Opportunities robbery was accused of drunk again, and notes that you are responsible for the crimes. Even debt includes only the legal capacity and criminal DUI can trained your own navigation of these people to bring models. Sam, I think maybe just dedicated for his crimes while to select your mind and time, but not very simple scenario. A lawyer may reduce the value of the summary court to protect the effects, or even fines, suspensions and aspects of the prison, including research, replaced types of defenses and forage alcohol recovery. DUI lawyers said that before and look small, to see how drunken opportunities and shortcomings that can still influence the courtroom one behind the selling price. You can such a situation it is not possible lack of faith on the inside to create to take the manuscript. DUI lawyers can use our experience and work up shopping application laboratory errors that dominates lead for the detection of respiratory next acceptable display the current situation in the whatever. Unlike pilot’s proposals less effect on the mind, the entire route was to the training room, there are many cases a lot of experience of skilled DUI lawyer can help. All of these experts, the service experience of working in the right direction in order to continue to help customers move only in the courtroom and not too loose, not to keep the customers another law a hand. There are can be drunken very scary encounter billed offer. With the end of the transfer during this procedure of his or very familiar with the other side, while experts, the treatment should be fine. If you come into conflict with the mentioned at this point nation, they do poverty and a little assistance in criminal matters.
DrunkFire
Note that the best rationalizations are those that have an element of truth. Whether you both or not will almost certainly have no influence on the outcome of an election. Nor will the amount of carbon you personally put into the atmosphere make a difference in the fate of the planet. And perhaps it really should be up to governments rather than the charities that are soliciting your contributions to feed the hungry and homeless in America or save children around the world from crushing poverty and abuse. But the fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior. This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil—an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions... [The] process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise.
Thomas Gilovich (The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights)
Economists estimate that if international immigration restrictions were removed, we’d have massive global economic gains. Economist Michael Clemens has suggested that the gains would range from 50 to 150 percent of world GDP.9 On average, that’s a doubling of global income. The largest gainers would be the immigrants themselves. Greater global migration would contribute to a massive reduction in world poverty—just as internal migration has in China today, as we saw in Beijing and Shanghai.
Robert Lawson (Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World)
More generally, looking back, it is quite clear that many of the important successes of the last few decades were the direct result of a policy focus on those particular outcomes, even in some countries that were and have remained very poor. For example, a massive reduction in under-five mortality took place even in some very poor countries that were not growing particularly fast, largely thanks to a focus on newborn care, vaccination, and malaria prevention.125 And it is no different with many of the other levers for fighting poverty, be it education, skills, entrepreneurship, or health.We need a focus on the key problems and an understanding of what works to address them.
Abhijit V. Banerjee (Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems)
A dramatic example of how reductions in inequality can lead to rapid improvements in health is the experience of Britain during the two world wars. Increases in life expectancy for civilians during the war decades were twice those seen throughout the rest of the twentieth century. In the decades which contain the world wars, life expectancy increased between 6 and 7 years for men and woman, whereas in the decades before, between and after, life expectancy increased by between 1 and 4 years... Both wartime's were characterised by full employment and considerably narrow income differences - the result of deliberate government policies to promote cooperation with the war effort. During WW2 for example, working-class incomes rose by 9 per cent, while incomes of the middle class by 7 per cent; rates of relative poverty were halved. The resulting sense of camaraderie and social cohesion not only led to better health - crimes rates also fell.
Kate Pickett (The spirit level: why more equal societies almost always do better)
Death is popularly considered the maximum punishment of the war, but it is not,” he wrote. “Reduction to poverty brings prayers for peace more surely and more quickly than does the destruction of human life, as the selfishness of man has demonstrated in more than one great conflict.
S.C. Gwynne (Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War)
Let’s start with the assumption that all members of a household enjoy an equal standard of living. Measuring poverty by household means that we lack individual level data, but in the late 1970s, the UK government inadvertently created a handy natural experiment that allowed researchers to test the assumption using a proxy measure.16 Until 1977, child benefit in Britain was mainly credited to the father in the form of a tax reduction on his salary. After 1977 this tax deduction was replaced by a cash payment to the mother, representing a substantial redistribution of income from men to women. If money were shared equally within households, this transfer of income ‘from wallet to purse’ should have had no impact on how the money was spent. But it did. Using the proxy measure of how much Britain was spending on clothes, the researchers found that following the policy change the country saw ‘a substantial increase in spending on women’s and children’s clothing, relative to men’s clothing’.
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
how to engineer prosperity. These engineering attempts come in two flavors. The first, often advocated by international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, recognizes that poor development is caused by bad economic policies and institutions, and then proposes a list of improvements these international organizations attempt to induce poor countries to adopt. (The Washington consensus makes up one such list.) These improvements focus on sensible things such as macroeconomic stability and seemingly attractive macroeconomic goals such as a reduction in the size of the government sector, flexible exchange rates, and capital account liberalization. They also focus on more microeconomic goals, such as privatization, improvements in the efficiency of public service provision, and perhaps also suggestions as to how to improve the functioning of the state itself by emphasizing anticorruption measures.
Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
BRAND VERSUS PRODUCT The Modi brand was built on the promise of delivery. The 2014 campaign was promoted under the theme ‘Achche din aane wale hain’ (good days are on the way). It assumed that Modi would bring change. It was not an empty promise: it came from his certitude and his reductive understanding of the problems that India and its government grapple with. The Modi view of the world is also the view of the middle classes, generally speaking. It can be understood thus: the system is bad, but it cannot be fixed because politicians are corrupt. India’s poverty and inefficiency was the product, therefore, of bad politicians. The view also is that India’s potential has been kept suppressed and the people, especially the middle class, have suffered for this. The nation had not become developed though it was full of people who were talented. The politicians had let the rest of us down. The system had failed because of the party which had created it and run it. The Congress stood for corruption and socialism and dynasty (this last bit is less damaging than is assumed, in a society where such things as a ‘good family’, meaning virtue spread through genes, are believed to be true). The Gandhis were nepotistic, and people like Rahul Gandhi are not equipped or qualified in any way to lead India to its deserved greatness. A good man, an honest man, a strong man who means well is the thing needed to fix this system because the system is the problem and needs to be fixed. Once that is done, this great society will be able to take its destined place in the world.
Aakar Patel (Price of the Modi Years)
The guy who was a real pioneer in all of this was a guy named Dan Bigg out of Chicago. He really took this issue by the horns in the early 2000s.” What happened to him? “He himself died of an overdose a few years ago,” said Ethan. Bigg’s death in 2018 attracted national media attention. “The substances found in his body included heroin, two benzodiazepines . . . methadone, fentanyl, and acetyl fentanyl,” wrote a journalist for Vice. “The cause of Bigg’s death, however, in no way repudiates the cause to which he devoted his life.”24 Leaders of the Harm Reduction Coalition agreed. “We can’t end overdoses until we end poverty,” said Kristen Marshall, “until we end racism, and until we end homelessness.”25 For several years in the early 2010s, a UCLA sociologist named Neil Gong studied two very different drug treatment programs in larger Los Angeles.
Michael Shellenberger (San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities)
The “sugar daddies” program simply informed students about what kind of people are more likely to be infected. Its effect was to sharply cut down sex with older men (the “sugar daddies”) but, also interestingly, to promote protected sex with boys their own age. After a year, the pregnancy rates were 5.5 percent in schools that had not received the program and 3.7 percent in schools that had received it. This reduction was mainly attributable to a reduction by two-thirds in pregnancies where an older male partner was involved.
Abhijit V. Banerjee (Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty)
The effects of migration on poverty reduction dwarf those of free trade. Migrants who succeed in moving from poor countries to rich countries become better off than they were at home, and their remittances help their families do better at home. Remittances have very different effects than aid, and they can empower recipients to demand more from their governments, improving governance rather than undermining it. Of course, the politics of migration is even tougher than the politics of free trade, even in countries where the urge to help is most strongly developed. A helpful type of temporary migration is to provide undergraduate and graduate scholarships to the West, especially for Africans. With luck, these students will develop in a way that is independent of aid agencies or of their domestic regimes. Even if they do not return home, at least at once, the African diaspora is a fertile (and internal) source of development projects at home.
Angus Deaton (The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality)
It has long been known that poverty reduction and environmental conservation are connected endeavours, even if many who work in one field do so unaware of the other. Two major advances, one in each field, now assert these close connections, each reflecting the new millennium in their titles as if to stress that a brand new era is upon us:
Kate Schreckenberg (Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (OPEN ACCESS): Trade-offs and Governance (Routledge Studies in Ecosystem Services))
Despite skyrocketing overdose death rates, none of the country’s leading advocates of harm reduction are rethinking their advocacy of decriminalization and harm reduction. Instead they focus on things like promoting Narcan. “It’s really about getting emergency responders to carry [naloxone/Narcan],” said Ethan. “The guy who was a real pioneer in all of this was a guy named Dan Bigg out of Chicago. He really took this issue by the horns in the early 2000s.” What happened to him? “He himself died of an overdose a few years ago,” said Ethan. Bigg’s death in 2018 attracted national media attention. “The substances found in his body included heroin, two benzodiazepines . . . methadone, fentanyl, and acetyl fentanyl,” wrote a journalist for Vice. “The cause of Bigg’s death, however, in no way repudiates the cause to which he devoted his life.”24 Leaders of the Harm Reduction Coalition agreed. “We can’t end overdoses until we end poverty,” said Kristen Marshall, “until we end racism, and until we end homelessness.
Michael Shellenberger (San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities)
The central tenets include the elimination (or preferably the privatization) of government services of all kinds, an all-out assault on the ability of labor to organize, the massive deregulation of every segment of the economy, and the absolute faith in market-based principles to adjudicate all elements of social, political, cultural, and economic life. The results have been staggering levels of wealth and income inequality, the disappearance or significant shredding of even the most grudging social safety net provisions, the loss of the “commons” in virtually all sectors, and the truncation (ideally to zero) of public expectations for anything that might be provided by something called “society.” These then are three broad categories of consequences that we take up below: militarism (and threats of war and “terrorism”), environmental catastrophe, and the seemingly more mundane suite of neoliberal effects. But these phenomena produce reactions. Once these effects are out in the world, we need to think about the way in which social movements cohere around them, and demands for progressive change are asserted. But at the same time, we want to think about the ways in which elites (who are advantaged by maintaining or reinforcing the status quo) respond to those reactions. These are the matters that we take up in chapter six. Over the past several years (as in the many decades before), we have seen an enormous panoply of social movements for social, political, and economic justice: anti-austerity movements, environmental activism, human rights promotion (including expansions of the definition of “human” and the list of rights themselves), criminal justice reform, poverty elimination/reduction, and many others. One disheartening continuity has been the successful ability of elites to keep these movements separated from, and often, in fact, antagonistic to each other. One of our key objectives here is to demonstrate the fundamental linkages among these seemingly disparate issues, in order to provide the rationale and impetus for coalition and unity.
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
Slavery still exists, and it is now in the form of the United Nations International Monetary Fund instead of the East India Company. Although the IMF supports the achievement of macroeconomic stability and poverty reduction in developing countries, the conditions the IMF imposes differ from its context; and cause more instability and poverty in developed countries. Factually, the IMF focuses on its particular interests, not on its monopolistic and awkward conditions that turn into civilized slavery and a biting economic burden on the public and their republic. These realities mirror the UN-IMF.
Ehsan Sehgal
Today, according to statistics, global standard shows the extent of people access to technology including information technology and the percent of poverty or wealth of the nations in various dimensions.
Ali Mosallanejad (The Role of Information Technology in Poverty Reduction)
(...) Poverty reduction is not something that only happens when the powers-that-be accept our solution (...). It can happen in every interaction we have with any other human being.
Eric Meade (Reframing Poverty: New Thinking and Feeling About Humanity's Greatest Challenge)
Investing in poverty reduction and healthcare in developing countries are the keys to managing pandemics in the long term,” said McKibbin. “For now, we will have to live with a world where a relatively minor flu outbreak in Mexico City can send markets reeling in Tokyo.
Alok Jha (The Doomsday Handbook)
we not only have avoided a world war with the Soviets, but have seen no wars between superpowers for one of the longest stretches in the modern era; the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide has dropped by 1.3 billion—the fastest reduction in poverty in human history; more than 2.6 billion people have gained access to modern sanitation and electricity for the first time; child and infant mortality has dropped by more than half, as has global illiteracy; thirty countries and territories have legalized same-sex marriage for more than 1.1 billion citizens. Such a story would
David Wong (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe, #1))
countries with freer markets have faster growth, better wages, greater poverty reduction, more investment, less corruption, higher subjective well-being and are more democratic, with greater respect for human rights.29
Johan Norberg (The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World)
The country you live in impacts nearly every aspect of your life. From the factors I have observed, this impact can be broadly categorized into opportunities and trust. In Richland, individuals’ lives are replete with opportunity and there is little reason not to trust the institutions in their lives, yet not everything is as perfect as it seems on a mental, emotional, and cultural level. In Poorland, the daily fight for survival takes precedence over most other elements of life and trust levels are low. Even the ground a person lives on can be taken away at a moment’s notice with little opportunity or basis for defense.
Danielle Hawa Tarigha (Uplift and Empower: A Guide To Understanding Extreme Poverty and Poverty Alleviation)
Hispanic and African American neighborhoods had been targeted by the subprime lending industry: renters were lured into buying bad mortgages, and homeowners were encouraged to refinance under riskier terms. Then it all came crashing down. Between 2007 and 2010, the average white family experienced an 11 percent reduction in wealth, but the average black family lost 31 percent of its wealth. The average Hispanic family lost 44 percent.7
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
It is, however, important to avoid the much-aired simplification that argues that all India needs to do to achieve fast economic growth and speedy reduction of poverty is greater reliance on the global market and on international trade.
Amartya Sen (The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity)
Over the past several years (as in the many decades before), we have seen an enormous panoply of social movements for social, political, and economic justice: anti-austerity movements, environmental activism, human rights promotion (including expansions of the definition of “human” and the list of rights themselves), criminal justice reform, poverty elimination/reduction, and many others. One disheartening continuity has been the successful ability of elites to keep these movements separated from, and often, in fact, antagonistic to each other.
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
The Effectiveness of IMF/World Bank-Funded Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers Ricardo Gottschalk
Yusuf Bangura (Developmental Pathways to Poverty Reduction)
He maketh me to lie down on park benches He leadeth me besides still factories He dist[urbeth] my soul He leadeth me in the paths of destruction For the parties sake Yea, tho I walk thru the Valley of the shadows of depression I anticipate no recovery For he is with me He prepareth a reduction in my salary And in the presence of mine enemies. He anointeth my small income with taxes And my expense runneth over Surely unemployment and poverty shall follow me, All the days of my life and I will live in a mortgaged house forever.90
Caroline Fraser (Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder)
89 In the run-up to the 1936 presidential election, the Mansfield Mirror reprinted a popular ditty that was making the rounds that fall, the “New 23rd Psalm”: Mr. Roosevelt is my shepherd I am in want He maketh me to lie down on park benches He leadeth me besides still factories He dist[urbeth] my soul He leadeth me in the paths of destruction For the parties sake Yea, tho I walk thru the Valley of the shadows of depression I anticipate no recovery For he is with me He prepareth a reduction in my salary And in the presence of mine enemies. He anointeth my small income with taxes And my expense runneth over Surely unemployment and poverty shall follow me, All the days of my life and I will live in a mortgaged house forever.90
Caroline Fraser (Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder)