Poverty.

POVERTY

The World Bank has dedicated its thirteenth annual global development study to an exhaustive examination of the "poorest of the world's poor", analysing programmes which have successfully eliminated poverty.

The 260-page analysis--World Development Report 1990--first measures poverty, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, and then draws lessons from the experience of countries which have successfully reduced poverty.

An uneven burden

The burden of poverty is spreading unevenly among countries, the Bank states. Nearly half of the world's poor live in South Asia, a region that accounts for roughly 30 per cent of the world's population. Sub-Saharan Africa has a smaller, but "still highly disproportionate, share of global poverty", the Report says.

Within countries and regions, there are also disparate concentrations of poverty. The weight of poverty falls most heavily on women and children.

Two elements of success

In analysing what policies have successfully reduced poverty in certain countries, the World Bank finds two major elements in them:

* Promoting the productive use of the poor's most abaundant asset--labour. This is accomplished through policies that harness market incentives and use social and political institutions, infrastructure and technology to make the work of the poor more effective.

* Providing basic social services to the poor. Efforts to reduce poverty in the long run are not likely to succeed without "greater investment in the human capital of the poor", the Report stresses. Health, education and nutrition programmes address the main consequences of beun g poor. Education also attacks some of the most important causes of poverty.

The number of poor people could drop by 300 million by the end of this decade, it concludes, if the world community adopts development policies based on the two elements described above.

Progress against poverty

Despite the staggering numbers of poor people remaining, there has been much progress in the global struggle against poverty over the past 25 years. The Report gives the following indicators:

* Per capita consumption in the developing countries rose from $590 to $985 (in 1985 dollars) between 1965 and 1985.

* Levels of health and education improved in most countries even when incomes did not rise.

* Life expectancy lengthened from 51 to 62 years.

* Primary school enrolment rose from 73 per cent to 84 per cent. Nevertheless, 15 million children under the age of five in developing countries die from causes not normally fata in the industrial world. Some 110 million children do not go to school at all.

The Report praises Governments for the progress made against poverty, but points out several deficient policies. On average, an estimted 70 to 85 per cent of the developing world's total health spending, both public and private, goes for curative care rather than for preventive and community services which would make a real difference for the poor, the Report says. Governments also tend to support higher-level education training programmes over basic education services that would favour the poor.

A successful strategy to reduce poverty would require:

* readjusting priorities in health and education;

* implementing family planning services; and

* giving extra help to the weakest members of the poor population--the old, the disabled, the widows and orphans--who need a system of income transfers and social safety nets.

How to measure poverty?

Knowledge about the poor is essential if Governments are to implement successful programmes to reduce poverty. But how is poverty defined?

The Report defines poverty as "the inability to attain a minimal standard of living". To make this definition work, three questions must be answered: How does one measure the standard of living? What is a minimum standard? How is the severity of poverty expressed in a single measure or index?

The World Bank searches the answers to those questions by analysing rural and urban poverty, the demographic characteristics of the poor, their assets and sources of income, their expenditures and their position in society.

This survey concludes that there are two "overwhelmingly important determinants of poverty": access of the poor to income-earning opportunities and their capacity to respond to them whey they exist. When those opportunities are lacking and access to social services is limited, "living standards are unacceptably low".

What harms the poor?

What harms poor countries harms the poorest of the poor. The Report analyses the effects of trade, debt and aid on those countries:

Trade. Many trade barriers raised by industrialized countries have harmed the poor. Over the long term, trade liberalization would help poorer countries.

Debt. Severely indebted low-income countries with large numbers of poor people are still struggling under their debt burden, despite the recent international debt-reduction initiatives. During the 1980s prices for many primary commodities exported by developing countries fell to their lowest levels since World War II.

Aid. Development aid should be more tightly linked to a country's efforts to reduce poverty. If countries become more serious about reducing poverty, the volume of development aid should be increased. In 1988, aid amounted to $51 billion. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, aid is projected to incrrease in real terms about 2 per cent a year, which would amount to $64 billion by 2000.

Aic could reach as high as $144 billion if all donors attained the widely-accepted 0.7 per cent aid to gross national product ratio, the Report concludes.