In preparation of People's Health Assembly II - part 35
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ON POVERTY (2)
10. Policies that increase the incomes of the poor enhance the
productive capacity of the whole economy.
11. A country pursuing redistributive policies could reduce pov-
erty even if its total income did not grow. But we are hard-
pressed to find real-world examples.
12. The poor remain poor because they cannot borrow against fu-
ture earnings to invest in education, skills, new crops and en-
trepreneurial activities. They are cut off from economic activ-
ity because they are deprived of many collective goods (property
rights, public safety, infrastructure) and lack information
about income opportunities.
13. The debate on what is first, growth or poverty reduction is
a meaningless debate that diverts attention from the questions
that should be our real focus: what works, how and under what
circumstances.
14. Although some progress is being made in poverty alleviation
in some places, it has been painfully slow, as the gap between
rich and poor countries continues to grow.
15. In most countries, poverty reduction strategies are insepa-
rably linked to debt relief operations, to tariff reductions in
the rich countries and in many cases to tax reform. Debt relief
has to be linked with poverty alleviation programs WITH civil
society participation in the decision-making.
16. To hold governments accountable, indicators of the social
impact of reforms implemented and of poverty beyond income need
to be tracked. Just recently, the combination of lower Third
World commodity prices and higher oil prices resulted in trade
losses of 15% in half of the poorest countries. The debt service
of these same countries increased on average from about 17% of
exports in 1980 to a peak of about 30% of exports in 1986. In
1997 it was 15%.
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Claudio Schuftan
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn