Global Poverty and the Main Roots of Its Persistence

Abstract

Despite the growing intensity of international trade in the last decades and the work of global economic institutions, we still face a global poverty problem. Almost half of the global population lives in poverty. Moreover, there are many examples of growing poverty in developing countries during the 1990s. In the first part of this article, I will analyze the change in the global poverty situation between 1990 and 2001. The truth is that in many cases developing countries are themselves responsible for their underdevelopment. Yet there is some evidence that the developed world bears a certain amount of responsibility for global poverty, too. The purpose of this paper is not to analyze the concrete roots of poverty in specific developing countries, because the variability of possible factors is infinite. I will therefore try to identify only the most important (the most common) roots of poverty in developing countries - this is why I use the term "global poverty" (meaning the poverty as a global problem). I will focus more on the international (external) causes of poverty in the developing world than on the internal ones. In the final part, I will explore the arguments in favour of poverty reduction.