We all know that poverty exists everywhere we go. It is an inevitable thing wherein many have already tried to eradicate it but have failed to completely do so. As a Development Studies major, I have already been immersed with topics and issues that discuss poverty. But until now, there is still no foolproof solution on how we can end poverty. However, there was a certain book that I was fortunate enough to read about ending world poverty. I should warn you, however, that the solutions to poverty that were noted by the author are based on a macro level. It encompasses more than just individuals but also the states and its development economists. This is how poverty viewed based on the perspective of a Development Economist:
Eradicating poverty has been a problem of all countries for several years. Until now, there is still no definite solution to the problem of poverty, although a lot of economists and political leaders have been on the quest to resolve this prolonged problem. One of these economists is Jeffrey Sachs who has been continuously trying to find the solution to poverty. Based from his book “The End of Poverty”, he listed and explained several reasons why countries fail to achieve economic growth. These are poverty trap, physical geography, fiscal trap, governance failures, cultural barriers, geopolitics, lack of innovation and demographic trap. However, based from some data that he had gathered, even though some countries that have one or two of these failure characteristics, these few countries still grew despite its disadvantages from other countries. Through Sachs explanation of poverty, he was able to find an end to it. He claimed that development economics should be treated like a modern medicine both in development of fundamental science and in systematization of clinical practice. He then drew out five lessons from clinical medicine to be applied in economics practice. The first lesson is, economies are complex systems like the human bodies. Societies are composed of different systems and a failure of one would lead to the failure of all systems. Therefore, these systems must act as one and help each other in maintaining the survival of every system. The second lesson is economists must learn the art of differential diagnosis just like medical clinicians. Economists need to be trained not just on looking at the underlying causes of economic distress but having a thorough examination of the causes and what particular remedies are suited for a country’s condition. An economist must not always assume of a cause of an economic distress if he has no background with the situation of a certain “patient” or country. Hence, an economist must be able to interact with the “patient” in order to know the underlying cause of economic distress. Third lesson is economics should perceive treatment in “family” terms and not just individual terms. This means that the condition of one country should not be viewed as its own predicament but it should also include the conditions of the global community and its relationship to them. Fourth lesson is continuous monitoring and evaluation is necessary for good development practice. Development practitioners must give their advices based on what they have monitored on the current situations of the countries instead of overlooking the problems. The monitoring and evaluation should be continuous in a way that development practitioners guide these countries in every step of the way until these countries are able to grow out from the “illness” or poverty. The fifth and last lesson is development economics should be taken as a profession. Often, development practitioners do lack the ethical and professional standards with regard to their tasks. They do not exert much effort in finding the right solutions for the problems and just rely on shallow approaches. Hence, they just base their advices from theories rather than practice. They do not give their full attention to the current conditions of the countries because they assume that these problems are all the same and that using the same approaches would solve it. Well in fact, development economics require commitment to thoroughly go into the history, ethnography, politics, and economics of the countries and to give honest advices to these countries. Without the commitment of these development practitioners, I doubt that the problem of poverty would ever be resolved.
Through the author’s analysis of poverty and solutions for the problem, countries are challenged to thrive hard in order to achieve successful results and of course to achieve the goal of eradicating poverty. These countries should not stop from aiming its goals because nothing is impossible. The poor and rich countries should not stop help one another because each country is a part of the whole global community. Rich countries must not blame poor countries from being poor because these rich countries do have the responsibility to help the poor countries. Indeed, in order to make their way up the economic ladder, these countries whether rich or poor should work together.
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