Poverty: The road not taken

An elderly trash collector at work in the upmarket Gulshan area of Bangladeshi capital Dhaka in this 2014 photo. An unfair socioeconomic system is blamed for increasing the rich-poor divide in the world. (Photo by Rock Ronald Rozario/ucanews)

Across the globe today, it is common for men to spend their days and nights worrying if they will have enough money to take care of their families and see their children educated.

The anxiety is well founded when we have a look at the global scenario of wealth and poverty as the world today marks International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

According to the United Nations, more than 700 million — or 10 percent —  of the world's population still live in extreme poverty and struggle to get by on a daily income of less than US$1.90, the global poverty line.


Nor is having a job even a guarantee of ensuring a decent living — U.N. data shows that at least 8 percent of employed workers and their families lived in extreme poverty in 2018.

There have been significant global, national and local efforts to eradicate poverty in recent decades. Currently, eradication of poverty is the number one priority listed in the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. 

According to the World Bank, poverty around the world has dropped significantly in that time, from 46 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2016.

Most of the world’s poor people today hail from impoverished and developing nations in Africa and Asia. They are not only poor because they cannot earn enough money but also because they are victims of an unfair system that continues to prevent them improving their lot.

Inequality and poverty of morality

While in some cases armed conflicts and oppressive regimes are responsible for an upsurge in poverty, in most cases it is an unfair global economic system, triggered by so-called globalization and capitalism, that is to blame for a widening gulf between rich and poor.

For example, Bangladesh has not been engaged in any war since its 1971 independence from Pakistan but its unfair economic system ensures extreme inequality — about 22 percent of its population of 160 million live in extreme poverty.

Ironically, the nation is projected to record the third-quickest growth in the number of high-net-worth individuals in the world in the next five years, according to a report by Wealth-X, a New York-based research firm.

For example, the monthly fuel costs alone of an SUV of a garment factory owner in capital Dhaka are higher than the gross monthly wage of many workers in his industry.

It is also very common for rich people to make handsome donations to the right people and thus guarantee themselves special treatment wherever they go, from places of worship to every aspect of social, cultural and political life; the poor are merely swept aside.

The upshot of this endless cycle is that many people live below the poverty line not because of economic downtrends but due to an unequal and discriminatory global economic system that drives almost everything we see around us.

It is a mind-numbing fact that in 2019 the wealth of the world’s 26 richest people — yes, just over two dozen — is equal to that owned by 50 percent (3.85 billion) of the planet’s population. British charity Oxfam said last year that imposing a mere one percent wealth tax on those 26 billionaires would raise enough money to educate every child around the globe who is currently unable to attend school.

In 2013, Pope Francis, in his highly applauded first apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), heavily criticized extreme globalization driven by capitalism. He slammed consumer culture, corporate greed and the notion of top-down economic systems.

He said: “Today we also have to say ‘thou shall not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”

Focusing on the wrong poverty   

Pope Francis’ groundbreaking 2015 encyclical, Laudato si’, was another firestorm against “a throwaway culture,” “consumerism” and “irresponsible developments” that not only disregarded human life but also caused irreparable environmental pollution and degradation.

“What rules today is not man, it is money,” the pope said, denouncing an “economy and financial system lacking in ethics.”

Indeed, the world focuses so much on highly published programs and projects of eradication of poverty through charities and donations but does too little to nothing to tackle the root cause: the poverty of morality.

We don’t care when a poor person dies without food or in the freezing cold but newspaper headlines proclaim it “a tragedy” when the stock market loses 10 points or the price of gold rises sharply.

We follow the latest fashion trends slavishly but we don’t want to know — or don’t feel a moral obligation to do something — about the hundreds of children who suffer and die from chronic hunger and malnutrition every day.

Only a few people know how International Day for the Eradication of Poverty came into being through the struggles of a French Catholic priest, Father Joseph Wresinski.

Born and raised in an immigrant family in Paris suffering from chronic poverty and social exclusion, Father Wresinski believed “poverty is not inevitable but imposed.” Like Pope Francis, he too was critical of human greed that held rich people back from sharing their wealth with the poor.

That being so, the notion of eradicating poverty from the world once and for all is unthinkable.

But a change in our mindset about tackling this human crisis, so that we begin to think of it in terms of ending an unfair system everywhere, would be a huge step forward to help those at the bottom of the ladder.

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Original Article: Poverty: The road not taken