Ending world poverty is achievable.

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time BY JEFFREY D. SACHS (New York: Penguin Press, 2005) 416 pp., $27.95 hardcover

THERE ARE 1.1 BILLION people in the world today who live not only in poverty but in extreme poverty. q-heir daily life is a struggle just to survive. But many don't: more than 8 million on the planet die each year because they are too poor to stay alive.

Jeffrey Sachs has spent twenty years investigating why some countries are poor and others extremely well off. More importantly, he's used this knowledge working in dozens of countries around the globe to promote development and improve human wellbeing. In his new book, The End of Poverty, Sachs lays out a plan to accomplish two objectives by 2025: first to end extreme poverty everywhere and then to ensure that all of the world's poor have a chance to climb the ladder of development.

There already exists a bold set of commitments that go a long way toward achieving these targets, namely the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are the eight goals that all 191 UN member states unanimously agreed to in 2002 by signing the United Nations Millennium Declaration. Sachs stresses that the rich countries have repeatedly promised to help the poor countries achieve these goals through increased development assistance and that this can be accomplished within the bounds of what's already been promised.

Ending poverty would be nothing less than the greatest accomplishment in human history. The path to achieving it has been set out and the backers need ed have even signed on. Unfortunately, counterproductive practices from the past--aid for development that's poorly administered in many cases and shamefully reneged on in others--is changing only very slowly.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are the lead agencies in advising poor countries on how to break out of poverty. On their face, the development economics of these agencies just don't work. In the past quarter century, when impoverished countries have pleaded with the rich world for help, they've been sent to the IMF. The main IMF prescription, complains Sachs, "has been budgetary belt tightening for patients much too poor to own belts." When an IMF program in a poor country collapses in the midst of social chaos and economic distress, the IMF simply chalks it up to the weak fortitude and ineptitude of that country's government.

Sachs is especially dismayed by the attitude of these agencies toward the MDGs. He contends that they champion these goals in public speeches while approving programs that won't achieve them. Privately they insist that the goals can't be met.

As for the obligations of individual countries in financing the MDGs, the United States is at the bottom of the list. The amount it has failed to deliver comes to almost half the total foreign assistance shortfall. In contrast, one of the persistent myths among people in the United States is that the country is doing all it can to help the poor nations. For example, a 2002 survey conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland reported that respondents from the United States believed, on average, that foreign aid accounts for 20 percent of the federal budget (about 24 times the actual figure). This is essentially the same result as surveys done over and over during the 1990s.

The same myth extends to high government officials who should know better. Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, no foe of foreign aid, once expressed his frustration at the country's sending "trillions of dollars" in aid to Africa with nearly "nothing to show for it" Sachs dissects U.S. aid to Africa in a typical year, showing that it came to a grand total of six cents per African, explaining perhaps why Secretary O'Neill could find "nothing to show for it."

Sachs devotes a whole chapter to exploding myths, mostly about Africa, because prejudices against that continent presently run so high. But he underscores that critics expressed the same attitudes about other parts of the world before those places achieved economic development and the prejudices could no longer hold up. According to one argument, people are poor because they're lazy and the way we know they're lazy is because they're poor. Another argument contends that help for Africa, in particular, will backfire as an even greater population explosion leads to more hunger and suffering. But Sachs, ever-armed with copious amounts of data, shows the near-universal result that population growth declines as per-capita income increases; a concerted effort to end extreme poverty would be the best way to end exploding population, and quickly.

Similarly, where severe health problems are a major impediment to development, foreign aid has to target those problems if it is to be of value. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, has an environment that makes it the global epicenter of malaria--it has the right amount of rainfall, the perfect temperature, and even the type of mosquito needed. Sachs is convinced that tropical diseases bred in this environment have been "the greatest factor in slowing Africa's economic development throughout history."

A direct impact of malaria on development is through the outright loss of life. The current estimate is that there are up to five billion clinical cases each year. This enormous incidence of the disease, which usually goes untreated among the poor, claims nearly 3 million lives a year. Bouts of malaria in children have a more indirect impact. Repeated disease episodes can leave them with chronic anemia and a lifetime of other ill effects. These health problems, combined with their likely poor school attendance and weakened ability to learn, means that the children enter adulthood, if they reach adulthood, without the prerequisites to succeed.

Most remarkably, given these tragic outcomes, relatively low-cost methods are available to prevent or to treat the disease.

Critics of aid to Africa invariably assert that these programs will necessarily fail because corruption or poor governance is rampant on the continent. It's a criticism that must be answered. Sachs begins by noting that the criticism is greatly overstated. By World Bank indicators, there is no evidence that Africa is poorly governed by the standards of very poor countries: there are several well governed countries relative to their income levels, some that are poorly governed relative to income, and some in between.

In this mix, aid should be seen as a compact, with commitments on both sides. The commitment of the rich countries is to help all poor countries where the collective will is present to be responsible partners. The poor countries have a right to development assistance only if they carry through on their commitment to good governance. Not all governments will want to make such a commitment, and although it may lead to tragic consequences for their populations, "these countries need not apply."

But Sachs finds it only fair to recognize the disruptive cruelties and depredations that the western world has long imposed on Africa. Three centuries of slave trade were followed by a century of brutal colonial rule, which left Africa bereft of educated citizens and leaders, basic infrastructure, and public health facilities. The borders of the newly independent states followed the arbitrary lines set by the former empires, dividing ethnic groups, ecosystems, and resource deposits in irresponsible ways that guaranteed future instability. And as soon as the colonial period ended Africa became a pawn in the cold war. Sachs cites one of the most reprehensible episodes in which CIA and Belgian operatives assassinated the charismatic first prime minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, and installed the corrupt Mobutu Sese Seko in his place

Although Sachs never uses the word Humanism, he sees a pattern of thinking that can reasonably be called humanistic as essential to success. That large numbers of people in the United States believe the world is approaching the "end days" of biblical prophecy, with the corollary that development is irrelevant, is a challenge to anyone committed to rationality rather than scriptural prophecy in determining what needs to be done. Consequently, he cites the promotion of "science and technology, grounded in human rationality" as essential to improving the human condition.

And science will have to play a central role if poverty is to be ended. The most important reason for the spread of prosperity has been the transmission of technologies and the scientific ideas underlying them. These ideas can be used over and over, without being depleted, without diminishing the ability of others to use them, and so provide a world in which everyone can be better off.

Despite the enthusiasm generated by The End of Poverty, the latest effort in that direction by the richest industrial countries was only partially successful. At the G-8 meeting in July 2005, presiding British Prime Minister Tony Blair set out an ambitious agenda calling for substantial aid to the Palestinians and a huge increase in aid to Africa. Although there were some accomplishments, they fell short of the effort needed to finally bring about the end of poverty.

The G-8 members agreed to write off the debt owed to multinational organizations by eighteen poor countries, fourteen of them in sub-Saharan Africa. This will reduce annual debt service by only about $1 billion and it's far short of reaching the 100 nations that need debt forgiveness in order to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. As for direct aid, members agreed to double their aid to Africa but Blair had to abandon his effort to persuade them to increase their overall development aid to 0.7% of their gross domestic products. President George W. Bush, for example, promised to increase U.S. aid to Africa to about $8 billion a year by 2010, but this is far below the 0.7% target and it ranks nearly last among all the industrial countries.

To many advocates of the economic development of poor countries, a major tool would be a fairer trade climate, although Sachs rejects the "trade not aid" extreme. A more level playing field for global trade requires opening up Western markets by cutting the large subsidies given to farmers in the rich nations. Although Bush joined Blair in pressing the other Europeans and Japan to curb their trade-distorting subsidies, it was to no avail: that advantage will continue.

Despite the slow progress, however, there is reason for optimism. The cynic's dismissal of musical events held around the world just before the G-8 meeting can't hide the fact that large numbers of people have been motivated to become part of what would be the greatest accomplishment in human history. Certainly the movement to end poverty has sparked Tony Blair, among others, to take a leading role. Now it's up to the rest of us to join in as vigorously as we can.

After more than thirty-five years of industrial research and university teaching, Albert L. Huebner now writes widely on contemporary issues in science and is a contributing writer for Toward Freedom.