THE GLOBAL POVERTY TRAP

THE GLOBAL POVERTY TRAP

Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano once wrote, ‘The division of labour among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.’ The global division of labour has relegated the poor to the rule of perpetual loser. They are caught by forces at local, national, and global levels that combine to form a three-tiered trap.

At the local level, elements of the poverty trap include skewed pattern of access to land and other assets, physical weakness and heightened susceptibility to disease, population growth, and powerlessness against corrupt institutions. These are reinforced at the national level by innumerable policies – from tax laws to the structure of development investment – that neglect or discriminate against the poor. And at the global level, the poor are held down by the devastating combination of oppressive debt burdens, falling export prices, and rising capital flight. All these factors and forces, like diabolical counterparts to Adam Smith’s invisible hand, strengthen each other as they interlock.

The first of the poverty trap’s four local parts is the lack of productive assets; the poor are poor not only because they earn so little but because they own so little too. In developing societies, where three of four people earn their living in agriculture, the most crucial asset is land. Yet ownership of farmland is concentrated in the hands of a fortunate few. Latin America has the worst record. The skewed landownership there is a legacy of colonial times, when Spanish and Portuguese rulers establish vast plantation; 1 per cent of landlords commonly own more than 40 per cent of the arable land. Crowded Asian nations fare somewhat better while in Africa land is less scare and collective tribal landholding arrangements moderate inequality.

Combined with the momentous force of population growth, misdistribution of land pushes ever more of the poor into the vulnerable position of being farmers without land. As millions of the poor families divide already small farms between their children, plots become too small to provide subsistence. The mechanization of agriculture in some regions has displaced millions more, as commercial operators expel sharecroppers, squatters, and smallholders.

The second part of the poverty trap at the local level is physical weakness and illness. Lacking consistent nourishment, clean water, basic medical care, and sufficient housing space to avoid rapid spread of infection, the poor are chronically weakened by disease. Physical weakness can combine with low earnings to form a vicious circle: for lack of food, the poor have no energy to work; for lack of work, they have no money to buy food.

Population pressures are the third component of the local trap. Rapid growth in numbers drives wages down to the survival level as the poor compete with each other for scare work. it stretches investment resources thin and raises the number of children for whom each worker must provide. it overtaxes natural resources , diminishing their productivity. Yet poor couple has large families because they know that some of their children are likely to die, and because they lack access to family planning. Having many children is part of a strategy for economic security: when times are bad for some, they may be better for others. This ‘strength in numbers’ strategy lower the chances of pulling the whole family out of poverty, but also reduces the risk of falling deeper – into starvation.

Local poverty also stems from powerlessness. Unable to read, the poor are sometimes misled or intimidated into signing away their rights to land or accepting debt repayment terms that verge on extortion. Local officials employ well-intended laws and regulations to hassle the less fortunate to the point of paralysis. Legal systems are often a dead end for the poor, riddled as they commonly are with procedural delays and corruption. In places, the exploitation of poor people does not even wear trappings of legality. The active human rights networks of Brazil and India both report killings and brutality against the rural poor almost daily. When the wealthy go to court against the illiterate poor there is little competition. When they go to war, there is none.

(From: A. B. Durning, A. B. ‘Ending Poverty’ In L. R. Brown, (Ed), State of the World New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 1990.)

QUESTIONS FROM THE PASSAGE

1.     List the four poverty trap, writing one sentence for each point.

2.     In two sentences, explain in each case how the writer feels the poverty trap has actually brought about poverty in developing countries.

3.     Write a summary of the entire passage in one page of your paper.

By Eguriase S. M. Okaka