A distinct lack of ambition.

The End of Poverty. Economic Possibilities for Our Time Jeffrey Sachs (Foreword by Bono) (Penguin, 2005, 320pp) 1-59420-045-9, $27.95

IT IS SIGN OF THE TIMES THAT few readers are likely to do a double take when reading The End of Poverty. Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, speaks in grand terms of the need to rid the world of the scourge of poverty. Yet, on close inspection, the goals he is proposing are exceedingly meager.

Sachs' target is to end extreme poverty by 2025. He defines this as making sure that no one has an income of less than $1 a day (at 1985 international prices). This would certainly be an improvement on today--with about 1.1 billion people living below that threshold--but it is hardly an ambitious goal. In contrast, the average American already lives on over $100 a day. Admittedly the two sets of figures are not strictly comparable, but they give an idea of the vast gulf between what is considered acceptable for America today and the supposedly ambitious targets for the poorest nations in 20 years' time.

Another sign of the times is that most critics have argued that Sachs is too ambitious. Conservatives have lampooned him, along with the official UN millennium goals he has played a central role in devising, for advocating a Big Plan. Their argument is that detailed plans have failed to alleviate poverty in the past so they are unlikely to do so in the future. Some have gone even further by implying that corruption almost inevitably leaves hundreds of millions of people, particularly in Africa, condemned to poverty.

It is easy to forget that today's pervasive social pessimism is a relatively new phenomenon. Back in the 1960s, for example, it was widely believed that the developing world should aspire to be like the West in economic terms. Even though underdeveloped countries were poor, the proper goal for them was to become modern industrialized nations. That was what the term "development" was taken to mean back then. Yet Sachs is keen to rule out such a conception of development in his own plans: "The goal is to end extreme poverty, not to end all poverty, and still less to equalize world incomes or to close the gap between the rich and the poor." (Emphasis in the original.)

The older conception of development, as opposed to today's orthodoxy of "sustainable development," is of more than historical interest. The countries which have had the most success in reducing poverty in recent years are the rapidly growing economies of Asia. Strong economic growth has enabled demographic giants such as China, and to a lesser extent India, to substantially reduce their level of poverty. According to a recent report by the United Nations, "The poverty rate in China dropped from 33 percent to 17 percent between 1990 and 2001, and in India from 42 percent to 35 percent." In other words, economic growth has lifted many tens of millions of people out of poverty in these countries--with more benefiting in other parts of Asia.

The key to success for such countries was not having a Big Plan in the sense of a detailed blueprint of how to alleviate poverty. It was rather having a vision of making society more affluent and catching up with the West. Poverty does not exist independently of the society around it. A broader dynamic towards growth generally means that the poor, to a greater or lesser extent, are likely to benefit.

Of course, given a choice between letting someone starve and giving them a loaf of bread only a stonehearted fool would choose the former. But such short-term measures, while sometimes necessary, are unlikely to reduce poverty. The most important single precondition for successful poverty reduction, and hopefully elimination, is to have a broader conception of development. External resources can help but their positive impact is likely to be limited without a grand vision of economic modernization.

THE EXAMPLE OF MALARIA, WHICH Sachs has done a lot of work on, illustrates this point clearly. As Sachs points out, more than one million African children, and perhaps as many as three million, succumb to malaria each year. Yet, as Sachs argues, the disease is completely treatable.

However, the Sachs approach is based on relatively pessimistic assumptions about what can be achieved. He emphasizes the use of bed nets treated with insecticide, along with basic environmental controls, to dramatically reduce the chances of Africans contracting malaria. Certainly such an approach would be an improvement on today. But, even using technology already available, it should be possible to do a lot better. It should be remembered that malaria was eliminated from the United States as far back as the early 1950s. Surely if it could be done in America more than half a century ago, it should be possible to eliminate it in Africa today?

The problem with eliminating malaria is that it requires substantial inputs of resources. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, several measures can help reduce malaria, including antimalarial drugs, destroying mosquito breeding grounds, spraying insecticides and using insect repellent. If malaria is contracted, the patient will benefit from treatment in modern hospitals. Yet most such measures are beyond the means of poor countries. The only realistic solution is for them to become richer so they can afford to fight the battle against malaria with modern weapons.

No doubt Sachs is right that the conditions in Africa make malaria particularly difficult to combat. Evidently the type of mosquito prevalent in Africa prefers to feed off people rather than cattle. This characteristic substantially increases the chance that it will spread the disease to humans. But, to reiterate the point, if malaria could be eliminated from America several decades ago it is hard to see any technical barrier to purging it from Africa today. To the extent there is a problem it is to do with economics rather than technological capacity.

There can be few more important goals for humanity than making poverty history. The problem with the Sachs approach is its lack of ambition in striving to achieve the objective he so loudly proclaims.

DANIEL BEN-AMI is writing a book on changing perceptions of economic growth.