Poverty reduction

Poverty reduction, or poverty alleviation, is a set of measures, both economic and humanitarian, that are intended to permanently lift people out of poverty.

Quotes

• A sound anti-poverty strategy should not only aim to increase incomes, but also provide the poor with a variety of assets — personal, social, political and environmental to help them overcome human poverty.
  • Raja Chelliah and R. Sudarshan. Income-poverty and Beyond: Human Development in India. Anthem Press. 1999. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-84331-001-3. 

• If farmers become weak the country loses self-reliance but if they are strong, freedom also becomes strong. If we do not maintain our progress in agriculture, poverty cannot be eliminated from India. But our biggest poverty alleviation programme is to improve the living standard of our farmers. The thrust of our poverty alleviation programmes is on the uplift of the farmers.
  • Rajiv Gandhi, Inagural Speech at the 25th National Convention of the Bharat Krishak Samaj, Hyderabad, 15 February 1988. Transcript at Selected Speeches and Writings: 1 January 1988-31 December 1988. Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. 1989. p. 180. . Quoted in Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi. Concept Publishing Company. 2009. p. 25. ISBN 978-81-8069-587-2. 

• It is almost enough to make one's jaw drop to think that officials at the World Bank and the IMF would suggest that they have poverty alleviation in mind when they force governments to withdraw subsidies that enable poor people to get clean water to drink. If this is a policy aimed at helping the world's poor, it's interesting to imagine what a policy aimed at hurting the world's poor would look like.
  • Linda McQuaig, All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

• What we’ve been hearing from the panelists is how the global food system works right now... It’s based on large multinational companies, private profits, and very low international transfers to help poor people (sometimes no transfers at all). It’s based on the extreme irresponsibility of powerful countries with regard to the environment. And it’s based on a radical denial of the economic rights of poor people... We’ve just heard from the Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many point a finger of blame at the DRC and other poor countries for their poverty. Yet we don’t seem to remember, or want to remember, that starting around 1870, King Leopold of Belgium created a slave colony in the Congo that lasted for around 40 years; and then the government of Belgium ran the colony for another 50 years. In 1961, after independence of the DRC, the CIA then assassinated the DRC’s first popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, and installed a US-backed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, for roughly the next 30 years. And in recent years, Glencore and other multinational companies suck out the DRC’s cobalt without paying a level of royalties and taxes. We simply don’t reflect on the real history of the DRC and other poor countries struggling to escape from poverty. Instead, we point fingers at these countries and say, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you govern yourselves properly?”
  • Jeffrey Sachs', Speech at the UN Food Systems Pre-summit, Share International magazine, Speech transcript (October 2021)

See also

• Benevolence
• Charity
• Developing country
• Development
• Economic inequality
• Greed
• Homelessness
• Inequality
• Macroeconomics
• Negative income tax
• Poverty
• Poverty in India
• Poverty in the United States
• Poverty in Uganda
• Redistribution of income and wealth
• Sharing
• Social inequality
• Social justice
• Social security
• Social work
• Unemployment
• Universal basic income
• Welfare

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Information and Communication Technologies for Poverty Alleviation

• United Nations Rule of Law: Poverty Reduction, on the relationship between poverty reduction, the rule of law and the United Nations.
• The Life You Can Save – Acting Now to End World Poverty
• "Educate a Woman, You Educate a Nation" – South Africa Aims to Improve its Education for Girls WNN – Women News Network. 28 August 2007. Lys Anzia
• Information and Communication Technologies for Development and Poverty Reduction: The Potential of Telecommunications Edited by Maximo Torero and Joachim von Braun (2006), Johns Hopkins University Press