{"id":66919,"date":"2015-11-30T12:02:14","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T12:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=66919"},"modified":"2015-11-29T17:39:40","modified_gmt":"2015-11-29T17:39:40","slug":"it-will-take-100-years-for-the-worlds-poorest-people-to-earn-1-25-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/11\/it-will-take-100-years-for-the-worlds-poorest-people-to-earn-1-25-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"It Will Take 100 Years for the World\u2019s Poorest People to Earn $1.25 a Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sustainable development goals will aim to eradicate poverty by 2030 but our current economic model, built on GDP, could never be inclusive or sustainable.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Occupy<\/a>

Occupy Wall Street protesters march down Broadway in 2012. Photograph: Lucas Jackson\/Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

If you follow international news you will be accustomed to headlines announcing that world leaders have succeeded in cutting global poverty in half <\/a>over the past couple of decades. Its sounds like brilliant news, but it\u2019s just not true<\/a>. The numbers have been furtively manipulated to make it seem as though our economic system is working for the majority of humanity when in fact it is not.<\/p>\n

The sustainable development goals<\/a>, to be decided in September, will take this dubious good-news story a step further. This time, the main goal is not just to further reduce extreme poverty, but to eradicate it entirely \u2013 and to do so by no later than 2030. This is a welcome move: it\u2019s about time we finally got around to putting poverty eradication firmly on the agenda. But it also raises some tough questions. Is it possible to end poverty under our current economic system?<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago economist David Woodward tackled this question in an article<\/a> published in the World Economic Review. His findings are shocking. He shows that, given our existing economic model, poverty eradication can\u2019t happen. Not that it probably won\u2019t happen, but that it physically can\u2019t. It\u2019s a structural impossibility.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s assume that we can maintain the fastest rate of income growth that the poorest 10% of the world\u2019s population have ever enjoyed over the past few decades. That was between 1993 and 2008 \u2013 after the debt crisis of the 1980s<\/a> that crippled much of the developing world and before the banking collapse of 2008<\/a>. During that period, their incomes increased at a rate of 1.29% each year.<\/p>\n

So how long will it take to eradicate poverty if we extrapolate this trend? 100 years.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it will require to bring the world\u2019s poorest above the standard poverty line of $1.25\/day. Compare that with the SDGs\u2019 2030 target. And keep in mind that Woodward\u2019s methodology is not able to capture the poorest 1% of the world\u2019s population, who will still remain in poverty even at the end of this period. That\u2019s 90 million people, more than the entire population of Germany today, who will remain in poverty forever. Whatever the SDGs will achieve, poverty \u201ceradication\u201d won\u2019t be one of those things.<\/p>\n

Even this extremely optimistic, best-possible scenario does not account for the slowdown in income growth since the financial crash. It doesn\u2019t factor in the spikes in food prices<\/a> that have effectively wiped out the incomes of the poor over the past few years, or the fact that climate change is already unravelling development gains across the global south. It imagines all of this away, and assumes that no further economic or ecological crises will happen in the next 100 years \u2013 which is a very big assumption indeed.<\/p>\n

As if the 100-year timeline isn\u2019t disappointing enough, it gets worse. A growing number of scholars are beginning to point out that $1.25\/day \u2013 which is the official poverty line of the SDGs \u2013 is actually not adequate<\/a> for people to survive on. In reality, if people are to meet their most basic needs and achieve normal human life expectancy, they need closer to $5\/day. How long would it take to eradicate poverty at this more accurate line? 207 years.<\/p>\n

Progress is woefully slow because to date the only strategy for reducing poverty is to increase global GDP growth. Politicians, economists and the development industry all have no other ideas. But GDP growth doesn\u2019t really benefit the poor<\/a> \u2013 or the majority of humanity, for that matter. Of all the income generated by global GDP growth between 1999 and 2008, the poorest 60% of humanity received only 5% of it. The richest 40%, by contrast, received the rest \u2013 a whopping 95%. So much for the trickle-down effect.<\/p>\n

To eradicate poverty global GDP would have to increase to 175 times its present size if we go with $5\/day. In other words, if we want to eradicate poverty with our current model of economic development, we need to extract, produce, and consume 175 times more commodities than we presently do. This is horrifying to contemplate. And even if such outlandish growth were possible, it would drive climate change to unimaginable levels and wipe out any gains in poverty reduction.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a farcical proposition \u2013 a cruel joke played at the expense of the poor. And, as if to add insult to injury, to achieve this level of GDP growth, global per capita income would have to be no less than $1.3 million. In other words, the average income would have to be $1.3 million per year simply so that the poorest two-thirds of humanity could earn $5 per day. It\u2019s completely absurd, but shows just how deeply inequality is hardwired into our economic system.<\/p>\n

But it is in fact possible to eradicate poverty in fewer than 207 years, and to do so without destroying our ability to inhabit this planet. We need to abolish debts owed by developing countries, close down the tax havens<\/a>, install a global minimum wage<\/a>, place a moratorium on land grabs, and put an end to the structural adjustment programmes that allow rich countries to control the fates of poor countries. On top of all this, we need to dethrone the GDP measure and replace it with something more rational \u2013 like the Genuine Progress Indicator<\/a> or the Happy Planet Index<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the SDGs do not provide the answer, because they are not allowed to challenge dominant economic interests. Despite the fact that we\u2019re already overshooting our planet\u2019s total biocapacity by about 50% each year<\/a>, growth, production, and consumption remain at the centre of their agenda. Yes, it\u2019s all qualified by terms like \u201cinclusive\u201d and \u201csustainable\u201d, but there are no clear commitments on what this is supposed to look like.<\/p>\n

Of course, the corporations and rich-country governments that control the SDG process are very unlikely to adopt the change needed to truly eradicate poverty, because it would threaten the interests of the global 1%. But that\u2019s exactly the point, and we need to be making it every chance we get.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Jason Hickel is an anthropologist at the London School of Economics.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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