Бедность как отрицательное последствие глобализации

Table of contents
Table of contents
Introduction
Definition of globalization
Definition of the word «POVERTY»
Globalization and poverty facts and stats
Poverty in Industrialized Countries
International inequality as a negative consequence of globalization
Poverty is down
How do developing nations contend with poverty
Сonclusion
The list of literature
Appendix №1
Appendix № 2

Бедность как отрицательное последствие глобализации

Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
1.8 billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometre, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 litres per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 litres of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 liters a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters day.)
Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhoea
The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
Millions of women spending several hours a day collecting water.
To these human costs can be added the massive economic waste associated with the water and sanitation deficit.… The costs associated with health spending, productivity losses and labour diversions … are greatest in some of the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa loses about 5% of GDP, or some $28.4 billion annually, a figure that exceeds total aid flows and debt relief to the region in 2003.
The richest 50 million people in Europe and North America have the same income as 2.7 billion poor people. «The slice of the cake taken by 1% is the same size as that handed to the poorest 57%.»
The world’s 497 billionaires in 2001 registered a combined wealth of $1.54 trillion, well over the combined gross national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3 billion) or those of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa ($1.34 trillion). It is also greater than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity.
A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.
Number of children in the world
2.2 billion
Number in poverty
1 billion (every second child)
Shelter, safe water and health
For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
Children out of education worldwide
The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world «rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.»
In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s assets in 2004.
( вся статистика взята с http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp)
Poverty in Industrialized Countries
But poverty is not restricted just to developing countries. Industrialized nations are also seeing a sharp increase in poverty. While the current form of globalization is resulting in additional wealth, the disparities are sharp. Less people are turning out to be benefiting while an increasing number are left behind.
Even in places such as Europe and USA, poor people still do not seem to get enough attention or resources to help alleviate their problems. For example, consider Britain:
Even though Britain is one of the most affluent members of the European Union (EU), a report shows that UK is the worst place in Europe to be growing up if you are poor, as more children are likely to be born in to poverty there, compared to elsewhere in the EU.
The UK National Office of Statistics also shows that disparities between rich and poor continue to grow in UK, as reported by a UK newspaper, The Independent, April 2000.
Priorities of the Labour Party government have often been questioned (as with priorities of any party) but highlighted by how at the turn of the century, some 150,000 people were homeless in Britain, yet the government helped build the Millennium Dome, that cost over a billion US dollars. (http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/PovertyAroundTheWorld.asp)
As another example, the U.S. is worth looking at as well.
It may be surprising to most people to realize that USA, the wealthiest nation on Earth, has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation, and disparities continue to grow
United For a Fair Economy reported that for 1998 almost 70% of the wealth was in the hand of the top 10%. In another report, they mention that the gap has widened in recent decades. «In 1989, the United States had 66 billionaires and 31.5 million people living below the official poverty line. A decade later, the United States has 268 billionaires and 34.5 million people living below the poverty line-about $13,000 for a three-person family.» (http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/PovertyAroundTheWorld.asp)
Even during the «booming economy» (for some in society, not all) in the late 1990s and early 2000, there was an increasing gap between the rich and poor. Even into 2002, fighting poverty appears not to have been a major election campaign issue as with recent previous election campaigns.
Then chairman of the Federal Reserve, Allan Greenspan, revealed concerns in mid-2005 that the increasing and widening income gap might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself in the US.
While health and education are key to any economy or nation to grow and be strong, both of these suffer issues of access, equality and pressure to cut back (including elsewhere around the world as discussed in the structural adjustment part of this site).
And it isn’t in just these two industrialized nations that these problems persist. A Guardian news report, for example, shows that certain types of poverty in various European cities can be regarded as worse than in some other parts of the world which one would not normally think would compare with Europe, such as India.
International inequality as a negative consequence of globalization
Per capita income ratio (PPP) around the world in the year 2000. Each color represents the ratio of income in the country to the world mean. Countries colored red have less than one quarter of the world mean income. Countries colored dark blue have more than four times mean world income. The remaining colors indicate incomes between these extremes: dark pink (0.25-0.75), light pink (0.75-1.25) and light blue (1.25-4). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_disparity)
International inequality is inequality between countries. Economic differences between rich and poor countries are considerable. According to the United Nations Human Development Report 2004, the GDP per capita in countries with high, medium and low human development (a classification based on the UN Human Development Index) was 24,806, 4,269 and 1,184 PPP$, respectively (PPP$ = purchasing power parity measured in United States dollars). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_disparity)
A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_disparity) Extensive statistics, many indicating the growing world disparity, are included in the available report, press releases, Excel tables and Powerpoint slides.
The major component of the world's income inequality (the global Gini coefficient) is comprised by two groups of countries (called the «twin peaks»)
The first group has 13% of the world's population and receives 45% of the world's PPP income. This group includes the United States, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and comprises 500 million people with an annual income level over 11,500 PPP$. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_disparity)
The second group has 42% of the world's population and receives only 9% of the world PPP income. This group includes India, Indonesia and rural China, and comprises 2,100 million people with an income level under 1,000 PPP$. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_disparity)
Economic inequality is generally considered to be approximately exponential as one traverses the strata of national and world societies from top-to-bottom. More sophisticated models of income distribution may apply (see Pareto distribution).
During the 20th century there was considerable divergence between the economic wealth of developed and developing countries. Richer countries like the United States and many European countries converged together towards a GDP per capita much greater than developing countries such as India and Ethiopia.
Income disparity in Malaysia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_disparity)
The evolution of the income gap between poor and rich countries is related to convergence. Convergence can be defined as «the tendency for poorer countries to grow faster than richer ones and, hence, for their levels of income to converge». Convergence is a matter of current research and debate, but most studies have shown lack of evidence for absolute convergence based on comparisons among countries.
Poverty is down
The proportion of people living on less than $1 a day decreased from 40 to 21 per cent of the global population between 1981 and 2001, says the World Bank's latest annual report. (http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/sep/30wbank.htm?zcc=ar)
The president of the bank, James Wolfensohn, said in his overall review that the past year had brought with it signs of hope and progress, but it had also brought signs of concern in the fight against global poverty.
On a positive note, new data this year showed that the number of poor people continues to fall. Development indicators were clearly improving in countries that had laid good foundations for growth.
The progress, though, was uneven across the globe. Growth in East Asia had meant that there were 500 million fewer people living below one dollar a day in 2001 than in 1981. (http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/sep/30wbank.htm?zcc=ar)
The number of poor people had also fallen in South Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa, though less dramatically than in  East Asia.
However, the absolute number of poor people had risen in African, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Central Asia.
Wolfensohn recalled his statement at the last annual meeting that the world he 'saw today was a world out of balance.' Of the six billion people of the world today, one billion people live in wealthy countries. They accounted for 80 per cent of the world's gross domestic product, while the other 5 billion have 20 per cent.
While rich countries spent $700 billion a year on defence and transferred $325 billion to agriculture, they devoted only $68 billion as developmental aid. (http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/sep/30wbank.htm?zcc=ar)
These global imbalances are reflected in the daily lives of poor people around the world. Two billion people have no access to clean water, 115 million children never get the chance to go to school, and some 38 million people -- 95 per cent of them in developing countries -- are HIV-positive, with little hope of receiving treatment. (http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/sep/30wbank.htm?zcc=ar)
Most of the global development goals will not be met in most countries by the 2015 deadline, the report said.
«So the world is at a tipping point: either we in the international community recommit to delivering on the goals, or the targets we set in a fanfare of publicity will be missed, the world's poor will be left even further behind, and our children will be left to face the consequences,» said Wolfensohn. (там же)
During the next 25 years, Wolfensohn pointed out, about 2 billion more people would be added to the global population, but only 50 million of them would be in the richer countries. (там же)
The vast majority will be born with the prospect of growing up in poverty and becoming disillusioned with a world they will inevitably view as inequitable and unjust. Terrorism is often bred in places where a fast-growing youth population has no hope, he said.
«We cannot ignore the rise of this more youthful world, » said Wolfensohn. «We need to face these realities, and we need to act on three issues in particular. »
«First, world trade talks, which can reduce agricultural protectionism and thus poverty in developing nations, must be pushed forward. Developing countries will gain nearly $325 billion by 2015 as a result, enough to lift 140 million out of poverty. Second, aid flows need to rise well above current commitments, and they need to be used more effectively. Although some increases have been made in recent years, almost a doubling of current development assistance levels will be required to meet the Millennium Development Goals,» he said. (http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/sep/30wbank.htm?zcc=ar)
It was essential that donor countries fully replenish the International Development Association, the fund that delivers proven results for the world's poorest nations.
«Third, we must push forward in relieving the debt burdens of the poorest countries by providing a larger proportion of additional aid in the form of grants rather than loans,» Wolfensohn added. (там же)
How do developing nations contend with poverty
Often, if governments try to improve situations for their people, they may face pressure or even military intervention by the powerful nations. (Ironic then, that the foremost backers of free trade point out that it will help reduce conflicts. It probably would, if there was truly free but fair and possibly managed to avoid problems related to power and undue influence. Today’s international trade is influenced by the wealthy.)
The powerful nations of course claim this is to save the other country, but it is usually to do with protecting «their» national interests; namely a constant supply of cheap resources or some other reason related ultimately to maintaining influence and power.
Dictators and other corrupt rulers have often been placed/supported in power by the wealthier nations to help fulfill those «national interests» in a similar way the old rulers of Europe used the Lords and Knights to control the peripheries and direct resources to the centers of capital. (Although, now, increasingly, «democracies» are supported, but ones where the economic choices are so limited, that the «democracy» provides a similar environment that a dictatorship did, for foreign investors, but without the overt violence and oppression.)
This means that it is hard to break out from poverty, or to reduce dependency from the US/IMF/World Bank etc.
Сonclusion
To sum it up, we can establish a fact, that those who benefit least from economic globalization are those who lack access to communications and capital, and as such are unable to take advantage of economic globalization. People and states that are underdeveloped, who have limited access to technology and capital therefore have limited opportunity to benefit from economic globalization.
Inequality is increasing around the world while the world appears to globalize. Even the wealthiest nation has the largest gap between rich and poor compared to other developed nations. In many cases, international politics and various interests have led to a diversion of available resources from domestic needs to western markets. Historically, politics and power play by the elite leaders and rulers have increased poverty and dependency. These have often manifested themselves in wars, hot and cold, which have often been trade and resource-related.
It’s needless to notice, that globalization often has been a very powerful force for poverty reduction, but too many countries and people have been left out, important reasons for this exclusion are weak governance and policies in the non-integrating countries, tariffs and other barriers that poor countries and poor people face in accessing rich country markets, and declining development assistance.
Some anxieties about globalization are well-founded, but reversing globalization would come at an intolerably high price, destroying the prospects of prosperity for many millions of poor people.
Critics of globalization, in fact, attribute the condition of the poor people of the world to globalization. In fact, these critics of globalization are none other than the people whose main concern is the fate of the poor in the world. They believe that since the advent of globalization, competition has increased, the poor countries have gotten poorer and the poor people have been exposed to harmful and unfair competition.
Having said that, however, it is wrong to pinpoint that globalization is a single cause of the misery and poverty in the world. It is an important cause, but it is a combination of factors that determine why people get rich or poor. Poverty, like wealth, is a multidimensional phenomenon and can be measured in different ways. However, it can be concluded that globalization has steadily increased over the years and is now a universal problem.
The list of literature
1. Challenges and risks of globalization. Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator// Financial Times. March 24th 2007 year.(Electronic version)
2. «Widening Gap Between Rich and Poor», China’s Report on US Human Rights Record in 2000, reposted at University of Dayton, School of Law (http://academic.udayton.edu/race/06hrights/GeoRegions/North)
3. «For richer, for fairer. Poverty reduction and income distribution», ID21 Insights Issue #31, September 1999 (http://www.id21.org/insights/insights31/index.html)
4. http://www.unicef.org/sowc05/english/index.html
5. http://www.urban.org/publications/407425.html#taba
6. http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/sep/30wbank.htm?zcc=ar
7. http://www.sociology.emory.edu/globalization/issues03.html
8. http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/PovertyAroundTheWorld.asp