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AbstractA large proportion of humankind today lives in avoidable poverty. This article examines whether affluent individuals and governments have moral duties to change this situation. It is maintained that an alternative to the familiar accounts of transdomestic distributive justice and personal ethics put forward by writers such as Peter Singer, John Rawls, and Thomas Pogge is required, since each of these accounts fails to reflect the full range of relevant considerations. A better account would give some weight to overall utility, the condition of the worst off, and individual responsibility. This approach provides robust support to global poverty alleviation.

CED released this paper as part of its May 2002 Policy Forum "The Economics and Politics of Globalization: A Global Perspective from the International Network of Private Business Organizations". The paper contends that business and government leaders in the developed world have an obligation to, and an interest in, reducing poverty worldwide. It focuses on three critical areas: setting sound economic policies, improving governance and rooting out corruption, and investing in human and social capital.

This thesis examines how effectively political philosophy contributes to solving the world's biggest problems. It does this by considering one such problem – global poverty – and exploring the two major initiatives of the last seventy years - the Human Rights Approach and the Human Development Approach. It finds that both approaches have merit thanks in part to important philosophical input. However, it also concludes that progress has been disappointing and considers apparent gaps in both disciplines and possibilities for closure. It concludes that philosophers may have missed an important factor in overlooking the work of social scientists on cultural values. These values might explain why many developed countries fail to meet their transnational duties to developing countries. Put simply, we might make more progress on global poverty by focussing on the values of rich countries. The thesis concludes with proposals to reclaim and extend the scope of political philosophy to better equip it for the challenge of addressing society's biggest issues.

My aim in this essay is to advance discussion of how to justify the sacrifices that reforms combating global poverty might entail for the world's better-off. I begin from the assumption that we should not try to motivate such sacrifices solely through the hope that they will produce significant poverty gains. Instead, we should also explore whether the affluent actually have compelling moral claims to the goods that they might be asked to relinquish as part of certain global reforms. This alternative strategy forms the background for my discussion of two influential global reform proposals. The first proposal is to tax the natural resource wealth enjoyed by various affluent countries in order to ameliorate global poverty. The second proposal is to prohibit the resource corporations based in affluent democracies from purchasing natural resources controlled by extreme kleptocrats. I argue that once we examine the relationship between these proposals from a sacrifice-sensitive perspective, we find that they genuinely conflict with each other, and that there are sacrifice-related reasons to put aside the canonical proposal for a global redistribution of natural resource wealth.

EnglishMicroenterprise and microfinance are widely promoted today as comprising an important anti-poverty strategy. While they have a role to play, this article shows that claims about their successes are exagge rated. It concludes that these programmes are most effective when incorporated into a wider set of social development policies and programmes specifically designed to address the problem of global poverty.FrenchMicro-entreprise et micro-finance sont généralement présentées aujourd'hui comme faisant partie d'une importante stratégie anti-pauvreté. Bien qu'elles jouent effectivement un rôle, ce papier montre que leurs prétentions aux succés en la matiére sont exagérées. L'article conclut sur le fait que ces méthodes sont le plus efficaces lorsqu'elles sont intégrées dans un ensemble plus large de politiques de développement social et de programmes visant spécifiquement à résoudre le probléme de la pauvreté mondiale.SpanishHoy se promueve ampliamente la pequeña empresa y el pequeño crédito como estrategia importantes en contra de la pobreza. Aunque dichas estrategias tienen un papel que cumplir, este ensayo muestra que se exageran sus éxitos. Se concluye que tales programas son más efectivos cuando se les incorpora a un conjunto más amplio de políticas sociales y programas específicamente diseñados para bregar con el problema de pobreza global.

Poverty has plagued humanity for generations. Even today roughly 1.3 billion people in developing countries live in abject poverty as measured by the international income threshold. Despite the progress made in reducing poverty in the last 50 years, there are growing trends that threaten to increase poverty. This article examines the nature and scope of poverty and makes several recommendations to reduce it.