Tag Archive for 'development'

Ending Poverty. What Approach Works Best.

Published on February 20, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 39 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I had to deliver this last week a 10 minute informative presentation on this topic, for my “States and Markets” class. I’m sharing some thoughts with you here and would be really curious to see what non-economists/ non-policy students think about the proposed solutions. Since I am surrounded by such folks, though, views from the community are also welcome :)

The figures
- there’s great news: the proportion of people living in extreme economic poverty, i.e. on less than $1.25/ day (at 2005 prices, adjusted for purchasing power parity) had dropped worldwide from 52% in 1981 to 26% in 2005

- the bad news: there are great regional disparities – China and East Asia in general, which used to be the poorest in the 80s (80% of the population affected by extreme poverty) have reduced their percentage of poor drastically (18% in 2005); however, sub-Saharan African has kept its poverty rate unchanged in the last 40 years, at about 50% of its population. Moreover, because of population increase, in absolute numbers the number of the poor has doubled (from 200 million in 1981 to 380 million in 2005) Continue reading ‘Ending Poverty. What Approach Works Best.’

Romania – A Mystery

Published on July 15, 2008 in Miscellaneous. 6 Comments Tags: , , .

Sometimes I wonder why I still find Romania so fascinating… It still beats me. One morning I come across some great initiatives, like the International Development Design Summit at MIT, meant to mainstream technological research and create innovative solution for the world’s poorest countries. Few know, but 90% of the world’s research ande development investments are targeted at serving the wealthiest 10% of the world’s population. And in Romania we can’t even speak about innovation as a key approach to development, let alone about real R&D and we are failing at making even baby steps in so many other fields. And still, the very same morning I receive a brilliant blog entry from the New York Times which reminds me that Romania is eclectic and fascinating, that there are dozens of things that work here and are so passee anywhere else in the world, that we are charming and have great potential. So yeah, I still adore Romania. Half instinctively, half rationally I guess.