Global poverty and inequality: a brief retrospective and prospective analysis

Over the past ten years, poverty reduction has risen up the international policy agenda as never before. This has been the outcome of a growing awareness among OECD countries of the need to address poverty, in part realised through civil society campaigning. But the task at hand is far from complete: it is currently estimated that 1.4 billion people worldwide live below the poverty line. In this context, how effective has the UK government’s response to global poverty been? A new paper brought out by the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester evaluates Britain’s international development performance over the past eleven years.

Considered historically, the world’s poverty reduction achievements are positive overall. Since 1980, the percentage of the developing world’s population living in poverty has declined from about 50 percent to 25 percent. At the same time, however, global inequality has been rising: although within-country inequality has risen in many cases, the rise of inequality has been more significant in-between countries. This means that many countries, including the richest, have continued to get richer, while many of the poorest countries have stayed poor. Since high inequality hampers economic growth and poverty reduction, the report predicts that the study of inequality will remain at the forefront of poverty research for some time to come. 

Coinciding with the ascent of New Labour, the UK’s contribution to the global poverty reduction effort has increased significantly since1997. Amongst others:

• development affairs have acquired Cabinet status
• expenditure on development aid rose from 0.27 percent of GNI in 1997 to 0.47 percent of GNI in 2006, with plans to reach 0.7 percent of GNI by 2013
• financial allocations for scholarly research on development have increased substantially
• more than other donors, the UK has legitimized and raised the profile of the politics of development

In spite of these achievements, British assistance remains in danger of succumbing to development’s orthodoxy. This continues to prioritise the technical problems of development - considered to be amenable to quick-fix interventions - over the adaptive problems - those complex, sometimes uncertain, forces that require long-term donor engagement. Rather than focusing on one or the other, the report suggests that donor policies should comprise of a healthy mix of responses (known and unknown, knowable and unknowable) that complex development problems, both current and prospective, necessarily require.