Sticks and Stones: Living with Uncertain Wars

The Link between Poverty and Violent Conflict

33 The Link between Poverty and Violent Conflict J. BRIAN ATWOOD “Blessed are the [poor] for they shall inherit the earth.”1 This biblical aphorism is being realized at an alarming pace. Almost half the world’s six billion people live under the poverty line of two dollars a day: 1.2 billion people earn less than one dollar a day and are in the extreme poverty category.2 By 2020, the globe likely will add two billion more people, 95 percent of whom will reside in the developing world.3 Absent any dramatic shift in policy priorities, the poor may indeed inherit the earth in the lifetimes of most of us. The implications of these demographic realities for the earth’s well-being have many dimensions. They include the loss of forest cover and biodiversity as well as the spread of infectious disease and food insecurity, to name but a few. This predictable population growth will create huge mega-cities as urbanization growth trends in the developing world continue unabated. It will also create an explosion of young people in the developing world at a time when the populations of Western nations will be aging dramatically. Does all of this mean that more violent conflict is inevitable? Some scholars hold that there is no empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that conditions of poverty cause conflict.4 Pervasive poverty alone is not a sufficient condition to create a major conflict, or even to cause an individual to commit an act of violence. Yet, many studies show that there is a strong correlation between the absence of material well-being and the prospects for violence, from crime in innercity neighborhoods5 to instability in poor nations.6 Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls, in their 1997 study of neighborhoods and violent crime, examined race and class segregation in poor Chicago neighborhoods and its impact on “collective efficacy,” or social cohesion among neighbors. They found that “alienation, exploitation, and dependency wrought by resource deprivation acts as a centrifugal force that stymies collective efficacy.” The greater the effect of this resource deprivation—a phenomenon the authors call the “concentrated disadvantage” factor—the stronger the correlation to the level of violence.7 The study by Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls focuses on race and class issues within American society, which, because of its egalitarian ethos, may intensify individual feelings of alienation and exploitation. This focus may limit the study’s value in examining the effects of poverty in developing nations. But “alienation, 34 UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD AS WE HAVE KNOWN IT exploitation, and dependency” are highly relevant factors there as well. They cause social and political stress both within poor nations and between poor and rich regions , especially in an information age when social and economic discrepancies are more obvious. Governments in the developing world and donor agencies supporting their development agendas are facing much the same “centrifugal force” referred to in the Sampson study. The report of the Commission on Global Governance entitled Our Global Neighborhood alludes to Sampson’s “concentrated disadvantage” factor when it states, “Absolute poverty provides scant basis either for the maintenance of traditional society or for any further development of participation in civic life and governance. . . . Unfair in themselves, poverty and extreme disparities of income fuel both guilt and envy when made more visible by global television.”8 That awareness of “extreme disparities of income” should cause both guilt and envy should not be surprising. How this relates to the need for “social cohesion” and the political integration necessary for a state to function and to prevent outbreaks of violence are crucial to this discussion. The World Bank report entitled Breaking the Conflict Trap argues that an unequal distribution of wealth exacerbates societal tensions and “increases the perception of relative deprivation.” This, in turn, the report states, leads to “perceived grievances and potential strife.”9 While this refers specifically to the distribution of wealth within a nation-state, the widening gap between income in the developed world and the developing world also increases the perception of relative deprivation and has real implications for global governance. The report on state failure, prepared under the auspices of the University of Maryland by several scholars on behalf of the U.S. intelligence community, examines the correlation between several development factors and the failure of state institutions.10 Such failure correlates strongest with three factors: infant mortality rates, fragile democratic institutions, and dependency on imports. Each of these...