Confronting Poverty: Weak States and U.S. National Security

Poverty and State Weakness

23 Grinding poverty is the lot of nearly half of the world’s population. More than 2.5 billion human beings subsist on less than $2 a day—$730 a year—the equivalent of seven pairs of quality sneakers in the United States.1 Poverty is more widespread than previously thought. Even before the recent global financial crisis, an estimated 1.4 billion people lived in extreme poverty (defined by the World Bank as less than $1.25 a day), up from the previous estimate of 1 billion.2 The percentage of people in the developing world living below the international poverty line has dropped from 52 to 26 percent since 1981.3 Nonetheless, in absolute terms, that number is increasing, and so is the gap between those living in extreme poverty and the rest of the world.4 In sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, the number living in poverty has almost doubled in the past twenty years. If current trends continue, the African continent will be home to one-third of the world’s poor by 2015. Although the complete impact of the recent food, energy, and financial crises on global poverty rates has yet to be determined, it has hit lowincome countries hard.5 This chapter examines poverty’s global prevalence and its relationship to weak states. Poverty and state weakness often interact in a vicious, destructive cycle, further entrenching poverty and in turn compromising the capacity of states to provide for their citizens and uphold their responsibilities to the international community. chapter two Poverty and State Weakness SUSAN E. RICE 02-0390-7 ch2.indd 23 12/18/09 3:13 PM 24 susan e. rice THE WORLD’S POOR While most of the world has become wealthier over recent decades, notes economist Paul Collier, the one billion poorest people live in countries where income has actually declined. The “average person in the societies of the bottom billion now has an income only around one-fifth that of the typical person in the other developing countries.”6 Since 2005 the developing world has been hit by a series of crises that threaten to derail recent progress toward alleviating poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the developing world. The food, fuel, and global financial crises are having a severe impact on poor countries because poor and weak states lack the resources necessary to adapt to such shocks. The increase in worldwide food prices from 2005 to 2008 has in itself forced 200 million more people into extreme poverty, most of whom will remain in poverty through 2009, even as food prices stabilize.7 Of the additional 30 million expected to face unemployment in 2009 as a result of the financial crisis, 23 million live in the developing world.8 The goal of halving 1990 poverty levels by 2015 will almost certainly not be reached in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, except in India.9 In the developing world, poverty does not just promise misery; it is often a sentence to death. Hunger, malnutrition, and easily preventable diseases like diarrhea, respiratory infections, neonatal tetanus, measles, malaria, and cholera thrive in fetid slums that have no basic sewerage, clean water, or electricity. Desolate rural areas lack basic health infrastructure to provide prenatal care or life-saving vaccines. Despite notable progress in recent years, 9.2 million children under five years of age died in 2007, mainly from preventable illnesses.10 In total, 25,205 children worldwide die each day—almost ten times the number of people who perished in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Most succumb, in effect, to poverty. The large majority of these children—7.5 million—live in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.11 In Sierra Leone, which has the world’s highest rate of child mortality, more than one-quarter of all children die before their fifth birthday.12 With the lagging progress in human development, infant deaths in developing countries are expected to increase by up to 2.8 million between 2009 and 2015.13 The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) blames undernutrition for more than one-third of under-five deaths.14 By World Bank estimates, access to improved sanitation facilities could save the lives of 1.5 million children a year.15 Taken for granted across America, such facilities are unknown to 72 percent of the people in Cambodia.16 The preponderance of the world’s poor live in the most populous 02...