The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (review)

Eradicating poverty has been a goal of international development for decades, yet one that remains elusive regardless of the developmental paradigm. Jeffrey Sachs addresses that problem in this important book by skillfully transcending broad-level conceptual goals down to detailed prescriptions of how to achieve the task. He seeks nothing less than ending extreme poverty during our lifetime.

Written partially as a biography, Sachs frames the topic of poverty reduction through his own learning process with robust experiences on the international development stage. An economist formerly at Harvard, and now heading the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Sachs explains global complexities in terms any intelligent lay person can understand, yet avoids oversimplification or unsupported assumptions. He immediately opens the reader's eyes to a new perspective by stating that every day, major newspapers could have as their headline, "More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty" (1). The fact that we don't see such "news" is a source of his motivation.

Although comprised of eighteen chapters, the book can be divided into four sections. The first is an introduction to global poverty that contextualizes stages of development using example countries. He charts the historical evolution in global development, framing both world wars and their after-effects as a great rupture in the linear path to global progress, and squarely places his belief in the transmission of technology as the key to development. Straight from the classic Rostow model, Sachs equates development with a ladder to be climbed, even using "The Eve of Takeoff" as one stage. Much of Chapters 1 and 2 are standard materials in introductory human geography classes, including discussion of the demographic transition, but at times come across as a somewhat simplified promotion of economic liberalization.

Chapters 3 and 4 comprise the next section of this book, an attempt to explain why uneven development exists. He discusses eight categories of problems that create a [Begin Page 137] poverty trap, explicitly acknowledging physical geography, although this focuses almost exclusively on factors affecting transportation costs. The strongest contribution from this section is in Chapter 4, where Sachs develops his concept of "clinical economics." He uses the analogy of a medical diagnosis to show methods that should be practiced for economic diagnosis. Economists, he states, should learn from physicians on how to ask the detailed questions for each "patient" and apply strategies that alleviate the specific symptoms. He critiques a "one-size-fits-all" approach standard in economic training and International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies, most notably the failed policies of the structural adjustment era of the past twenty years that often brought more suffering for the poor than relief. A key component of his diagnosis checklist is the human-environment ecology in each place.

Chapters 5 through 10 are the third section of the book, where Sachs highlights lessons learned from six case studies: Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China, India, and Africa. These chapters provide rich detail for specifics about development struggles. Perhaps most startling is his honest admission that, although an acclaimed economist and professor at Harvard, he was poorly trained in any "real world" context: "From the moment I walked off the plane, I began to understand what real economic development as all about" (92). Equally important is this: "In all my training, the ideas of physical geography and the spatial distribution of economic activity had not even been mentioned" (105). While distressing that academics can remain so divorced from the real world experiences and economists would lack any spatial perspective, geographers should take heart that Sachs now explicitly recognizes the importance of both. During his field experiences, Sachs also was rudely confronted with the fact that the IMF too often sets policies according to the wishes of major international banks rather than on sound macroeconomic policy to assist poor countries, and subsequently became a proponent for debt forgiveness and the need for greater contributions from...