Why Won’t the UN Say What Really Reduces Poverty?

May 5, 2018 by

by Chelsea Follett, Human Progress:

Earlier this month, the United Nations urged the world to celebrate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, advertising it on social media using the hashtag #EndPoverty. The UN noted the incredible progress on the issue:

Poverty has declined globally, from 1.7 billion people in 1999 to 767 million in 2013, a drop in the global poverty rate from 28 percent in 1999 to 11 per cent in 2013. The most significant progress was seen in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, where the rate declined from 35 per cent in 1999 to 3 per cent in 2013.

Unfortunately, the UN seems to misunderstand the source of that progress. It argues that government action and top-down technocrat-led programs are to thank for poverty’s remarkable decline. The UN statement continues:

Countries have taken action to end poverty… The Government of Tanzania, for example, started a massive overhaul of its current national programme, the Tanzania Productive Social Safety Nets, to reach people living below the food poverty line.

It is an accidentally instructive example. Tanzania has made impressive progress against poverty, but that is not because of increased government spending on food for the poor. In fact, Tanzania’s government is today far less redistributionist than in the past — and those past policies of redistribution led to near-starvation for the poorest Tanzanians.

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