Globalization And Poverty

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

In this new and expanded edition of Chossudovskys international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalisation of poverty. This book is a skilful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically. In this new enlarged edition -- which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction -- the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation. The book has been published in 11 languages. Over 100,000 copies sold world-wide.

Globalization, Poverty, and Income Inequality examines the relationship between globalization and trade liberalization, and poverty and income inequality, using Indonesia as a case study. Contributors examine how advances in coffee certification, treatments for visual disabilities, and property rights, among other factors, have had both meritorious and deleterious effects on the local population. Ultimately, they describe an ambiguous relationship between trade liberalization and inequality, both of which can increase or decrease in proportion to one another depending on region and sector. This empirically driven work provides a nuanced view of the trade-poverty relationship, contributing balanced testimony to policy debates being held internationally.

Globalization - the growing integration of economies and societies around the world, is a complex process. The focus of this research is the impact of economic integration on developing countries and especially the poor people living in these countries. Whether economic integration supports poverty reduction and how it can do so more effectively are key questions asked. The research yields 3 main findings with bearings on current policy debates about globalization. Firstly, poor countries with some 3 billion people have broken into the global market for manufactures and services, and this successful integration has generally supported poverty reduction. Secondly, inclusion both across countries and within them is important as a number of countries (pop. 2 billion) are failing as states, trading less and less, and becoming marginal to the world economy. Thirdly, standardization or homogenization is a concern - will economic integration lead to cultural or institutional homogenization?

Globalization is characterised by persistent poverty and growing inequality. Conventional wisdom has it that this global poverty is residual - as globalization deepens, the poor will be lifted out of destitution. The policies of the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO echo this belief and push developing countries ever deeper into the global economy. Globalization, Poverty and Inequality provides an alternative viewpoint. It argues that for many - particularly for those living in Latin America, Asia and Central Europe - poverty and globalization are relational. It is the very workings of the global system which condemn many to poverty. In particular the mobility of investment, and the large pool of increasingly skilled workers in China and other parts of Asia, are driving down global wages. This poses challenges for policy makers in firms and countries throughout the world. It also challenges the very sustainability of globalisation itself. Are we about to witness the implosion of globalisation, as occurred between 1913 and 1950? Using a variety of theoretical frameworks and drawing on a vast amount of original research, this book will be an invaluable resource for all students of globalization and its effects.

The persistence of poverty in many developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, in the face of increased globalisation and rapid trade liberalisation during the past two decades has inspired considerable debate on the impact of globalisation, in general, and trade liberalisation, in particular, on poverty. In Ghana, as in many other African countries, poverty remains the fundamental problem confronting policy makers in the new millennium as highlighted in the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy. Yet, between 1991 and 2006, the headcount index of poverty fell by 23.2 percentage points with the proportion of the population living below the national poverty line falling from 51.7% in 1991/92 to 28.5% in 2005/06. Poverty had fallen in the countryside as well as in the towns, though progress had been more rapid in rural areas. This optimism is, however, tempered by the fact that while poverty declined, inequality increased significantly during the same period. Large reductions in the incidence of poverty have occurred among private sector employees in both the formal and informal sectors, and among public sector wage employees, but export farmers have experienced the largest reduction in consumption poverty. Poverty reduction among the large numbers of food crop farmers, on the other hand, has been modest. Reductions in the incidence of poverty over the period have been smaller also for the non-farm self employed and informal sector wage employees. A recent publication by the World Bank suggests that had there been no change in inequality, the reduction in poverty would have reached 27.5 percentage points, so that Ghana would have achieved the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) target of reducing poverty by half in relation to its level of 1991/92. This book is one response to the challenge posed by the paucity of recent empirical evidence on the poverty and distributional impacts of trade policy reform in Ghana. The main objective of the study is to contribute to our understanding of the poverty and distributional impact of trade policy reform in Ghana by analyzing how trade liberalisation affects the well-being of households and in particular, if the outcome it generates is pro-poor, with particular interest in the gender-differentiated impact.

Globalization is characterised by persistent poverty and growing inequality. Conventional wisdom has it that this global poverty is residual – as globalization deepens, the poor will be lifted out of destitution. The policies of the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO echo this belief and push developing countries ever deeper into the global economy. Globalization, Poverty and Inequality provides an alternative viewpoint. It argues that for many – particularly for those living in Latin America, Asia and Central Europe – poverty and globalization are relational. It is the very workings of the global system which condemn many to poverty. In particular the mobility of investment, and the large pool of increasingly skilled workers in China and other parts of Asia, are driving down global wages. This poses challenges for policy makers in firms and countries throughout the world. It also challenges the very sustainability of globalisation itself. Are we about to witness the implosion of globalisation, as occurred between 1913 and 1950? Using a variety of theoretical frameworks and drawing on a vast amount of original research, this book will be an invaluable resource for all students of globalization and its effects.

An examination of the theoretical and empirical interactions between globalization, technology and poverty. Jeffrey James studies the effect of information technology on patterns of globalization and explores how such patterns can be altered to reduce the growing global divide between rich and poor nations.