6 ms·

archive: https://archive.is/BnBFT https://archive.is/BnBFT paper cited: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34583 https://www.nber.org/papers/w34583 >it would cos

archive: https://archive.is/BnBFT https://archive.is/BnBFT paper cited: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34583 https://www.nber.org/papers/w34583 >it would cost $318bn a year to reduce the global poverty rate to 1% at the $2.15-a-day line—roughly 0.3% of global GDP— with imperfect, real-world information. >around 60% of rich-world respondents say they would be willing to give up 0.5% of their income if that were enough to end extreme poverty. While in reality I'm sure this would be much harder than the article suggests, I buy the direction of the key points: 1) it costs a feasible amount, 2) there is strong support to do it. 3) creative approaches might be effective. Note: I kept the title I found in the print Economist version, since it is more informative.

datadrivenangel 6mo ago
The challenge is distributional. Controlling and withholding food aid makes you powerful, so at a certain point more money does not result in less poverty. But also we need to do more for ending poverty!
- WillAdams 6mo ago
  That is why organizations such as Heifer International: https://www.heifer.org/ https://www.heifer.org/ which focus on providing folks with the means to raise their own food and be self-sufficient are the key.
- darth_avocado 6mo ago
  > Controlling and withholding food aid makes you powerful It’s not even that malicious, bureaucracy takes over and more money is spent on the middle men than the recipients. In the US we already spend about $600B in charitable giving, yet most of the problems still remain. Even if you fix the distributional challenge, the second order effects of how the modern economy is setup ensure that extreme poverty will always exist. If the poverty line is $10k and you give every single person $10k, the corporations and rent seekers will adjust the cost of living so that the new poverty line is now $20K and extreme poverty still exists.
  - WJW 6mo ago
    I think you are overly focused on how things are done in the US, where it is thankfully quite rare to outright starve. In Africa it is quite common to kill foreign aid workers in order to deny food aid to the enemy. Bureaucracy and rent-seeking has nothing to do with it, it's just child soldiers being brainwashed to kill their enemies at any price.
    - darth_avocado 6mo ago
      Well yes, I think if you’re talking about war torn countries then yes. But when you talk about stable countries, poverty still exists and the inefficiencies of the bureaucracy and its impact on distribution is still the same. And hunger isn’t that uncommon in the US, where a extreme poverty rate is still 4-5% of the population.
      - philipallstar 6mo ago
        It's less inefficient bureacracy (although it is definitely that) and more culturally-normal corruption.
    - cogman10 6mo ago
      > In Africa it is quite common to kill foreign aid workers in order to deny food aid to the enemy. Where in Africa is this common?
      - mathgeek 6mo ago
        Best source I could find: https://humanitarianoutcomes.org/AWSR_2025 https://humanitarianoutcomes.org/AWSR_2025
        cogman10 6mo ago
        Yeah, quickly browsing this source it looks like Gaza is the primary location where aid workers are in danger (by a long shot. 181 killed in a year). Followed by Sudan, which is in an active civil war (60 aid workers killed). That's bad, but it doesn't seem incredibly common. The rest of africa looks to be pretty tame by comparison.
- hakfoo 6mo ago
  I always wondered "what if the Salvation Army had tanks?" If so much of the problems of aid delivery are due to failed, corrupt states, could we be better served by using some of the foreign aid spend to install and maintain governments that at least aren't an impediment to aid delivery? Yes, this would be a neocolonial programme, but one done with slightly less blatantly self-serving intentions than the previous generation of "civilization is mysteriously completely coupled with letting the home country raid your natural resources." But there's also meta-question: assume we're given all the logistical support we need. Are we even delivering the right kind of aid? Aid programmes are often sold to the donor countries as a convenient sink for their agricultural overproduction or scrap merchandise as much as anything else, and meanwhile the locals are begging for tooling to pull themselves up the value chain and increase self-sufficiency rather than just bags of rice and unwanted T-shirts that leave them dependent again in a few months.
anonym29 6mo ago
>around 60% of rich-world respondents say they would be willing to give up 0.5% of their income if that were enough to end extreme poverty. If they really were, they already be doing it, and it would be a solved issue. For many folks, it's a lot easier to say 'yes' to a survey about whether you would give your own money to the poor than it is to actually give your own money the poor.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6mo ago
  When it happens collectively e.g. through taxes, you get somewhat of a middle ground between the survey and giving your own money (directly and visibly). There seems to be some kind of international target of 0.7% of GNI (~GDP) for developmental aid already, which governments often don't meet fully but come close to (e.g. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03714/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03...), so the 0.5% would probably be viable in tax form.
JKCalhoun 6mo ago
"…around 60% of rich-world respondents say they would be willing to give up 0.5% of their income if that were enough to end extreme poverty." That really is sad. We're talking 0.5% and only 60% were okay with that?
- bombcar 6mo ago
  I suspect a percentage of the 40% don't believe it's possible, or believe it would end up being 0.5% of their income to enrich a select few (as has seemed to happen with previous attempts to "save" entire countries).
  - Teever 6mo ago
    Of course, the bigger question is what percent of that 40 actually want extreme poverty to exist for one reason or another — be it that they hate the people who are currently poor and can’t envision it happening to them or their community or because they have some weird cognitive defect like the just world fallacy that causes them to believe this is a positive condition for the world to be in. Some people also think that we should spend that money on other stuff that they’re interested in like cool space stuff and just don’t care about poor people and never will.
    - AlexandrB 6mo ago
      Another interesting question is what part of the 60% want extreme poverty to exist for one reason or another? Probably the same portion as of the 40%, just the reasons differ.
      - tempestn 6mo ago
        If they wanted it to persist, why would they give up a portion of their income to end it? Are you suggesting the 40% is just more honest than the 60?
    - jl6 6mo ago
      Remember it said rich-world respondents, not rich people. There are still poor people in rich-world countries that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.
throwup238 6mo ago
We don’t even have to get creative! Building out infrastructure is enough to get most people out of extreme poverty and it doesn’t have to be sold as aid, it can be sold as expanding markets. Based on stats from IFAD [1]: > There are some 500 million smallholder farms worldwide; more than 2 billion people depend on them for their livelihoods. These small farms produce about 80 per cent of the food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Estimates are hard to come by, but a significant fraction of those (>750 million) are subsistence farmers with zero market access beyond their nearest village or town. That not only means thy can’t effectively sell their produce but they can’t easily afford or have access to basic technologies and resources to improve their yields enough to get out of subsistence farming. Even metal tools are difficult to come by in many places, let alone a consistent supply of fertilizer. Mobile phones have had an outsized impact on these communities because they allowed farmers to get market data even if it was just a village away. Roads, irrigation, sanitation, and a whole host of other infrastructure we take for granted would have an even bigger impact, and these aren’t temporary solutions like food aid, which just distorts markts even further. That said, there are huge long standing systemic problems (some violent) that make these kinds of investments hard to justify politically and create a nasty chicken-and-egg problem. [1] https://www.ifad.org/documents/d/new-ifad.org/smallholders-can-feed-the-world_e-pdf https://www.ifad.org/documents/d/new-ifad.org/smallholders-c...

datadrivenangel 6mo ago

The challenge is distributional. Controlling and withholding food aid makes you powerful, so at a certain point more money does not result in less poverty. But also we need to do more for ending poverty!

WillAdams 6mo ago
That is why organizations such as Heifer International: https://www.heifer.org/ https://www.heifer.org/ which focus on providing folks with the means to raise their own food and be self-sufficient are the key.
darth_avocado 6mo ago
> Controlling and withholding food aid makes you powerful It’s not even that malicious, bureaucracy takes over and more money is spent on the middle men than the recipients. In the US we already spend about $600B in charitable giving, yet most of the problems still remain. Even if you fix the distributional challenge, the second order effects of how the modern economy is setup ensure that extreme poverty will always exist. If the poverty line is $10k and you give every single person $10k, the corporations and rent seekers will adjust the cost of living so that the new poverty line is now $20K and extreme poverty still exists.
- WJW 6mo ago
  I think you are overly focused on how things are done in the US, where it is thankfully quite rare to outright starve. In Africa it is quite common to kill foreign aid workers in order to deny food aid to the enemy. Bureaucracy and rent-seeking has nothing to do with it, it's just child soldiers being brainwashed to kill their enemies at any price.
  - darth_avocado 6mo ago
    Well yes, I think if you’re talking about war torn countries then yes. But when you talk about stable countries, poverty still exists and the inefficiencies of the bureaucracy and its impact on distribution is still the same. And hunger isn’t that uncommon in the US, where a extreme poverty rate is still 4-5% of the population.
    - philipallstar 6mo ago
      It's less inefficient bureacracy (although it is definitely that) and more culturally-normal corruption.
  - cogman10 6mo ago
    > In Africa it is quite common to kill foreign aid workers in order to deny food aid to the enemy. Where in Africa is this common?
    - mathgeek 6mo ago
      Best source I could find: https://humanitarianoutcomes.org/AWSR_2025 https://humanitarianoutcomes.org/AWSR_2025
      - cogman10 6mo ago
        Yeah, quickly browsing this source it looks like Gaza is the primary location where aid workers are in danger (by a long shot. 181 killed in a year). Followed by Sudan, which is in an active civil war (60 aid workers killed). That's bad, but it doesn't seem incredibly common. The rest of africa looks to be pretty tame by comparison.
hakfoo 6mo ago
I always wondered "what if the Salvation Army had tanks?" If so much of the problems of aid delivery are due to failed, corrupt states, could we be better served by using some of the foreign aid spend to install and maintain governments that at least aren't an impediment to aid delivery? Yes, this would be a neocolonial programme, but one done with slightly less blatantly self-serving intentions than the previous generation of "civilization is mysteriously completely coupled with letting the home country raid your natural resources." But there's also meta-question: assume we're given all the logistical support we need. Are we even delivering the right kind of aid? Aid programmes are often sold to the donor countries as a convenient sink for their agricultural overproduction or scrap merchandise as much as anything else, and meanwhile the locals are begging for tooling to pull themselves up the value chain and increase self-sufficiency rather than just bags of rice and unwanted T-shirts that leave them dependent again in a few months.

anonym29 6mo ago

>around 60% of rich-world respondents say they would be willing to give up 0.5% of their income if that were enough to end extreme poverty. If they really were, they already be doing it, and it would be a solved issue. For many folks, it's a lot easier to say 'yes' to a survey about whether you would give your own money to the poor than it is to actually give your own money the poor.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6mo ago
When it happens collectively e.g. through taxes, you get somewhat of a middle ground between the survey and giving your own money (directly and visibly). There seems to be some kind of international target of 0.7% of GNI (~GDP) for developmental aid already, which governments often don't meet fully but come close to (e.g. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03714/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03...), so the 0.5% would probably be viable in tax form.

JKCalhoun 6mo ago

"…around 60% of rich-world respondents say they would be willing to give up 0.5% of their income if that were enough to end extreme poverty." That really is sad. We're talking 0.5% and only 60% were okay with that?

bombcar 6mo ago
I suspect a percentage of the 40% don't believe it's possible, or believe it would end up being 0.5% of their income to enrich a select few (as has seemed to happen with previous attempts to "save" entire countries).
- Teever 6mo ago
  Of course, the bigger question is what percent of that 40 actually want extreme poverty to exist for one reason or another — be it that they hate the people who are currently poor and can’t envision it happening to them or their community or because they have some weird cognitive defect like the just world fallacy that causes them to believe this is a positive condition for the world to be in. Some people also think that we should spend that money on other stuff that they’re interested in like cool space stuff and just don’t care about poor people and never will.
  - AlexandrB 6mo ago
    Another interesting question is what part of the 60% want extreme poverty to exist for one reason or another? Probably the same portion as of the 40%, just the reasons differ.
    - tempestn 6mo ago
      If they wanted it to persist, why would they give up a portion of their income to end it? Are you suggesting the 40% is just more honest than the 60?
  - jl6 6mo ago
    Remember it said rich-world respondents, not rich people. There are still poor people in rich-world countries that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.

throwup238 6mo ago

We don’t even have to get creative! Building out infrastructure is enough to get most people out of extreme poverty and it doesn’t have to be sold as aid, it can be sold as expanding markets. Based on stats from IFAD [1]: > There are some 500 million smallholder farms worldwide; more than 2 billion people depend on them for their livelihoods. These small farms produce about 80 per cent of the food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Estimates are hard to come by, but a significant fraction of those (>750 million) are subsistence farmers with zero market access beyond their nearest village or town. That not only means thy can’t effectively sell their produce but they can’t easily afford or have access to basic technologies and resources to improve their yields enough to get out of subsistence farming. Even metal tools are difficult to come by in many places, let alone a consistent supply of fertilizer. Mobile phones have had an outsized impact on these communities because they allowed farmers to get market data even if it was just a village away. Roads, irrigation, sanitation, and a whole host of other infrastructure we take for granted would have an even bigger impact, and these aren’t temporary solutions like food aid, which just distorts markts even further. That said, there are huge long standing systemic problems (some violent) that make these kinds of investments hard to justify politically and create a nasty chicken-and-egg problem. [1] https://www.ifad.org/documents/d/new-ifad.org/smallholders-can-feed-the-world_e-pdf https://www.ifad.org/documents/d/new-ifad.org/smallholders-c...