Poverty alleviation is complex and challenging, but has been achieved, and can be achieved through many approaches. Key warnings must be heeded, however. Poverty can be persistent over many generations, but it can also be reduced in severity in just a few years, given the right context and appropriate action.
There is no single panacea - typically a range of tools should be used, or (in the spirit of community participation) at least offered to the those we are trying to help.
Key tools for fighting poverty
(Please give sources where possible to show that the listed tools are proven and/or acknowledged as effective against poverty.)
- Education
- Financial approaches:
- Support for microenterprises[verification needed] - e.g. programs using or selling appropriate technologies. Only a few very clear examples exist, such as the Kick Start treadle pump program. (Other successful examples may exist, but it is in the nature of appropriate technology that it may only be applicable in a specific context - while treadle pumps have been broadly effective, it is possible that other successful programs may be helpful in only a small area.)
Warnings
- Subsidies can be damaging to initiative, punish risk-takers, and encourage a kind of welfare dependence.
See also
Further reading
- Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty And The Ways To End It,W Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo (2011). See the website and Financial Timesinterview with Duflo.