Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

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.

Keywords

Poverty, developming countries, international relations, international trade, globalisation, development, economic growth, trade barriers, official development assistance, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Dependency School, brain drain, GDP

PDF Consultation (Slovak)

Author Biography

Michal Hönsch

He is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica (Slovak Republic). Between 1996 and 2001, he studied international relations and diplomacy at the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. Since 2001, he has been a doctoral candidate in the field of international relations. From 2002 to 2004, he worked at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bratislava as a specialist assistant focusing on the impact of information technology on living standards. He is currently employed at Accenture in Bratislava.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.