Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments March 2003 erstellt
Beschreibung:
In this world of plenty, almost half of the world's six billion people live on two dollars a day or less and the number living on less than one dollar a day has increased over the past fifteen years (World Bank 2000). Between one third and one half suffer undernutrition due to insufficient intake of calories, protein or critical micronutrients such as vitamin A, iodine and iron. More than one child in five lives in acute poverty. Why does such unnecessary injustice continue to disfigure a rich, technologically advanced world and what can be done to care for the poor and thereby to care for and honor God, as the Gospels instruct us? In attempting to answer those questions, at least partly, this paper offers some insights from recent research in economics, as well as my concerns about the limits to economic understanding of these humanitarian, intellectual and spiritual challenges. The Christian's interest in poverty is rather obvious. Jesus routinely expressed special concern for and devotion to the poor. We are called to feed the hungry, nurse the sick, and clothe the naked. The impulse to assist is obviously not unique to Christendom. Nor is it especially the comparative advantage of economics, for the instinct of economists is to look beyond the symptoms of poverty that indisputably demand prompt humanitarian response, and to seek instead the causal mechanisms that perpetuate poverty. In reflecting on the economics of poverty, my focus is therefore not on humanitarian response operations but, rather, on the mechanisms that necessitate the grim but honorable and too-necessary work of humanitarian relief agencies. Most of this essay was composed during a trip to some of my field research sites in Madagascar, a fascinating country where extraordinarily high species endemism rates fuel intense interest by conservationists and where the unique blend of Polynesian and Bantu cultures has long drawn the attention of cultural anthropologists. Such obvious unique qualities aside, Madagascar is nonetheless the quintessential poor economy. According to the most recent nationally representative household survey data, 69.6% of the population of Madagascar falls below a national poverty line equivalent to US $0.42/day per capita. More than 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas and 92% of the poor live in rural areas. The rural poor depend heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods, both as farmers and as workers on others' farms. Yet agricultural productivity is weak and the soils, forests and hydrological systems on which smallholder farming fundamentally depends are under significant threat from anthropogenic and natural causes. Because it so typifies poor economies, I illustrate some of my core points with brief anecdotes from a few of the many Malagasy who have been some of my most important teachers, not only about the economics of poverty, but also about the dignity and majesty of human life and the whole of God's Creation