Summary Of Banerjee And Duflo's Poor Economics

However, the aid has some drawbacks which include some of the policies not being practical and occasionally being too political which makes the targeted poor people more vulnerable. Also governments receiving the aid could be partial which can also result in uneven and biased distribution of the aid which doesn’t solve any problems.

Since the turn of the century, the world has experienced various events that have rendered millions homeless, starving or even without a country. Such events may range from merciless persecution by a ruthless dictator to a furious tsunami that leaves destruction in its wake. In such incidents, it is human nature to help those affected rebuild their lives and find comfort again. As a result, governments spend billions on foreign aid projects aimed at helping populations rebuild themselves after a tragic event. Despite the funding and resources spent on these projects, their success rate is dismal. Coyne’s book explains the flaws of state-led humanitarianism. Using case studies that range from Afghanistan to Haiti, Coyne successfully argues against state aid proving that continuing with that approach is likely to remain unsuccessful. He further demonstrates that state aid fails to fulfill its mandate because the parties involved are either too arrogant or ignorant to acknowledge fundamental flaws of state-led aid. He says that the influence of agenda driven opinions of blurs the objectives of financial assistance from the beginning. Since governments focus on what they should, rather than what they can do, the goals of the most aid-funded projects in affected nations remain unrealized.

It is clear that citizens in impoverished nations are stuck in a poverty trap, where they are unable to escape even with the assistance of aid from well developed nations. Many citizens are contributing money to charities because there is a moral obligation to donate if it does not put us into a state of economic instability. On the other hand, no matter how much aid is being given to nations stuck in poverty, this money is not helping any of the citizens. The money is going directly into the hands of corrupt governments and corporations, who constantly use it improperly. This aspect of money misuse is clearly illustrated in Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Boo focuses the book on the impoverished slum of Annawadi, located in Mumbai, India. Throughout the book, Boo shows examples of how the citizens of Annawadi are stuck in a poverty trap because of the country’s inconsistent and inefficient systems, leading to the failure of sustainable growth and poverty reduction to the nation. India is not the only place falling victim to this problem; many other third world countries grapple with the same issues. Other than helping the nations, aid has made impoverished nations circumstances even worse, pushing it into a further state of poverty. The main components of the failure of aid are due to developing countries not having proper infrastructure and institutions, no efficient government, and a dependence on aid.

An innocent child begs her mother for food, a single tear running down her cheek. The fires of life that once filled the girl’s eyes slowly begin to fade. The mother embraces her child, tells her the pain will be gone within a few moments. As she holds her, she feels the warmth slip away; her little girl’s body becomes engulfed by empty coldness. So much could have been done to save that life, from local government support to foreign aid, yet not enough aid was given. And so, society is posed with the question of “How much aid should wealthy nations provide for developing countries?” This paper will look at the philosophy behind this question by analyzing two articles.

The trouble with aid reveals, over time government in start to lose their sovereignty as they keep receiving aid. The aid created restrictions by the government because of the regulations of placed by those giving the donations. For they have a certain idea of how and where the money should be spent. This reduces the accountability of the government to its people and gives more agency in countries to while reducing the agency of the local government to intervene their rule of a state.

Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Applied ethics is a person’s judgement on a moral standpoint, of a particular issue in private and public life. In class we learned about four different philosophers and their views on world poverty. I agreed with two philosophers that have different views, but they both had the same opinion that the United States should stop sending aid to foreign countries. In this essay my view is that the United States should stop sending aid to foreign countries. I will defend my view against poverty by discussing Garret Hardin and, James Shikwati views on poverty, and how the United States and other countries will benefit from not sending aid.

One of my main arguments being how people do not believe that foreign aid helps, meaning they stop donating all together, creating immorality. This idea is supported in Banerjee and Duflo’s Poor Economics; they discuss the general reaction when faced with a major issue like poverty. Generally, our first instinct is to be generous and then our second thought is that there is no point to our generosity. Banerjee and Duflo are able to describe the general feeling that “our contribution would be a drop in the bucket, and the bucket probably leaks” (Banerjee and Duflo, 2). Regardless of the fact Banerjee and Duflo are trying to fight the assumption that we cannot do anything to help, it does not change the fact that this is the common belief when it comes to large issues like poverty. While I still believe that the frustration with inequality and poverty breeds immorality, I now believe that the bigger issue is on the global scale. In his book Encounter Development, Escobar makes the point that “development was – and continues to be for the most part – a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach, which treated people and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in charts of ‘progress’” summing up the immorality created by development thinkers who are there to “help” eradicate poverty (Escobar, 44). The inequality between the first world and the third world

In Poor Economics, Esther Duflo makes a cutting statement: “even the most well-thought-out policies may not have an impact of they are not implemented correctly”. She draws a distinct line between policies and politics and exposes how the latter can affect the implementation of policies. This post will exemplify such scenario with the implementation of the Washington Consensus (WC) in Latin America during the 1980’s. Latin America was immersed in a severe debt crisis. Governments were defaulting on payments owed to the IMF and the United States. Convinced there was a huge problem, policy-makers from Washington and the IMF decided to draft a 10-policy document that Latin American countries must follow if they wished to borrow more money in

Governments and state agencies need to be more concerned in the obliteration of poverty through providing foreign aid. "As much as people think that America does its part in providing foreign aid, statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development show that the U.S has been at the bottom of the list of industrialized countries as per proceeds that they give to foreign support." (Singer, 2009)

More than 3 million lives have been saved every year through programs relating to foreign aid. In addition to, more than 50 million couples are using family planning because of the aid. Lives are being saved every day because of the little bit of money we take out of our paychecks. If we can as a country can help save lives, then that’s something we should be willing to do. Statistics continue to show that we’re saving lives, not hurting them. For example, “During the decade, under-5 child mortality declined from a mean of 109.2 to 72.4 deaths per 1,000, or 36.8 fewer deaths among those children in the countries that received the most health aid, the researchers found (a 34 percent reduction). In the countries receiving the least, under-5 mortality fell from 31.6 to 23.2 deaths per 1,000, or 8.4 fewer deaths per 1,000 live births (a 26 percent reduction), the researchers reported”(Richter). During this decade, we saved more lives than we caused harm to, therefor foreign aid is being put to a good use and it is being used for exactly what it should be. The more Aid donated to the health and well-being of other countries, the brighter future we can have as a

“Benefits of foreign aid have recently been under severe scrutiny. Several observers argue that a large portion of foreign aid flow from developed to developing countries is wasted and increases unproductive public consumption. Poor institutional development, corruption,

Poor Economics offers up many double sided swords that provoke thought. Duflow and Banerjee beg the reader to look into issues that affect not only the poor, but those in their own backyards. The use of these questions holds the reader responsible for their stances on these issues and ask what changes that can be made. This is very relevant today, with more and more distance being created between the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich. As we experience more crippling poverty in all areas, our world begs for a solution. As the book progresses it becomes more and more apparent that we can no longer put this off.

Due to these severe issues, wealthier more developed nations have made it their responsibility to eliminate some of these issues by donating and providing aid to them. But, many attempts have had a negative outcome due to the interest of their government. Although it is the responsibility of the developed countries to aid and help the global poor, due to the severe long term effect that poverty has had, the donators, would eventually impoverish themselves to sacrifice their luxury to meet such a moral

Unfortunately, it was estimated that roughly 1.2 billion people in 1993 lived in extreme or absolute poverty, that which Robert McNamara regards “‘a condition of life so characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable standard of human dignity’” (Singer 219, 220). These estimates can be projected at nearly 2 billion today. A large majority of the people living in absolute poverty resides in underdeveloped countries. Among the nearly 4.4 billion people in these countries, “3/5 lives in societies lacking basic sanitation; 1/3 go without safe drinking water; 1/4 lack adequate housing; 1/5 are undernourished, and 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day” (Speth 1).

A majority of the Indian population lacks opportunities such as financial resources and thereby the ability to get jobs. They are stuck in an endless cycle which provides them with no opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty. Microcredit has been seen as a lifeline and as an opportunity by governments in developing countries, international funding organizations and donor agencies, in order to help the poor attain money since the 1950’s. It was in the 1950s and1960s, for the first time Indian Government started giving out loans to families in rural areas those who worked in the agricultural sector as well as city-dwelling families who were working in the unskilled sector to promote economic growth throughout India. Households in