Scoring Poorly in the Struggle against Poverty

The UN Summit on Millennium Development Goals, held in New York in September, ended with the usual parade of pop stars and statesmen. But beyond rhetoric, the point is that the campaign launched in year 2000, at the dawn of the new millennium, to eradicate extreme poverty from the world by year 2015 has stalled. It's not yet a total failure, but there are only five years to bridge a very large gap with respect to initial aspirations. Let's remind readers about the eight ambitious objectives set in 2000, embraced with great publicity by Tony Blair at 2005 G8 Summit in Scotland. The first is the elimination of extreme poverty, by halving the share of world population that lives on less than $1.25 a day, from 46% to 23%. Now we have attained 27%, an encouraging thing were it not for the extreme inequality in the distribution of this gains. Most of the drop is due to China (India and China amount to 62% of the population of the planet), where the share of very poor went down from 60% to 16%. Also six poor African economies have improved on their predicament, but in many other countries misery stays endemic. The issue of disaggregation concerns other targets as well. Take the objective of universal primary schooling: the percentage of kids in school went up from 82% to 89%. Malnutrition still plagues 16% of the world population (it was 20% in 2000 and will have to reach 10% by 2015). In many countries children under 5 are the worst affected: a staggering 48% in India (a veritable scandal for a fast-developing economy), and percentages in excess of 40% in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Congo. More satisfactory progress has been made in terms of infant mortality, as well as the access to water, and medical care. Finally, two fundamental, but hard to measure objectives: the emancipation of women and the struggle against their exploitation: a veritable growth multiplier, which is essential for the welfare of the family and well-being of society.

In New York, many governments, international agencies, corporations and non-profit organizations have announced targeted commitments. Financial contributions have been given to poor countries for agricultural improvement, to which the World Bank assigns a very high priority, while France, Japan and the United Kingdom have provided funds to combat AIDS and malaria and finance energy development and environmental sustainability. A major flaw about these initiatives is that they are voluntary commitments which are often not honored. Italy is a black sheep: it only gives 0.16% of its GDP in aid to poor countries. Only South Korea does worse among OECD countries. One should keep in mind that in a globalized world what matters is not only economic competition among developed and emerging economies, but a widespread sentiment of economic cooperation and social solidarity. As Obama said in New York: "Aid to development is not only a moral imperative, but an economic and strategic imperative." Let's hope they will heed his words in Rome, too.