Andy Sumner
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Description
Why are some people poor? Why does absolute poverty persist despite substantial economic growth? What types of late economic development or ‘catch-up’ capitalism are associated with different poverty outcomes? It is these apparently simple questions and the extent to which the answers may be shifting that motivated this book. The book is an in-depth analysis of the global poverty ‘problem’ and how it is framed and understood. The book questions existing theories of the causes of global poverty. The primary thesis of this book is that global poverty is becoming a question of national distribution. Put another way, absolute poverty is becoming relative poverty. One might expect global poverty to be focused in the world’s poorest countries, however, most of the world’s absolute poor live in growing and stable middle-income countries. This is because the world’s poor are concentrated in a small number of countries that have experienced substantial economic growth and passed the threshold into ‘middle-income country’ status. At the same time, poverty has not fallen as much as economic growth would warrant. As a consequence and as domestic resources have grown, much of global poverty has become more about national inequality, social policy, and welfare regimes and patterns of economic development or types of ‘catch-up’ capitalism pursued. The book argues that the causes of global poverty are changing and that patterns of growth, economic development, and distribution are of greater significance than a lack of available resources per se.
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