The Economist skriver intressant om tillvaron för dem som tjänar runt $2 per dag:
Even if you earn just $2 a day, chances are you'll earn $5 one day and zero the next. So the image of living hand to mouth is often inaccurate. Poor people must have some savings to survive, but many lack access to traditional banking. They end up resorting to elaborate ways to transfer wealth across time. Often this means simply stuffing money in their mattress or using a money guard (another person to hold the money for them). But this leaves their savings vulnerable to theft and fire.
Och avslutar artikeln:
We often underestimate what it takes to survive being poor.
Och det är definitivt så. Jag trodde för övrigt att mikrolån var en av de bästa metoderna att bota fattigdom, men tryggad tillgång till ägodelar kommer självfallet ännu tidigare i behovstrappan.
På samma tema länkade Johan Norberg tidigare till ett spel där man i Sim City-stil får prova att hantera en fattig landsbygdsfamiljs ekonomi. Att tipsa om spelet känns lite grann som när KSMB i But we have no bananas (finns att lyssna på på KSMB:s Myspacesida) undrar ifall Gösta Bohman "sett ett barn svälta ihjäl", men det ger en ögonöppnare i det lilla.
Och vidare gällande bankverksamhet i U-länder så finns en förstahandsupplevelse beskriven hos Kids Prefer Cheese:
even on good days, i have to psych myself up for the bank. i wish you could see this hell hole. people dont know how to form lines so its just a big mass of people pushing and shoving. its awful. and hot and sweaty and very inefficient. you push your bank book at the teller and then they look at it, look at you and hand you a small metal circle with a number on it. after about 40 minutes (usually) your number will flash up above the paying tellers desk. oh, but the numbers dont go in order. like 3 will flash followed by 356 followed by 74. and they often have mismatched bankbooks with numbers so you have to check that you are getting your bank book and the actual amount you requested back. Its lots of fun (insert major major rolling of eyes here)
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lördag 9 maj 2009
torsdag 24 januari 2008
The Economist om världens utveckling
The Economist skriver om världens framsteg:
In China 25 years ago, over 600m people—two-thirds of the population—were living in extreme poverty (on $1 a day or less). Now, the number on $1 a day is below 180m. In the world as a whole, a stunning 135m people escaped dire poverty between 1999 and 2004. [Med reservation för Världsbankens reviderade siffror.]
Digging canals and building water-treatment plants has increased the number of people with access to safe water: in South Asia, for instance, the number of those without clean water has been nearly halved since 1990. [Enligt Unicef fick mer än 1,2 miljarder människor bättre tillgång till dricksvatten mellan 1990 och 2004 (från 78 till 83 procent av världens befolkning).]
In 2007 Unicef, the United Nations child-welfare body, said that for the first time in modern history fewer than 10m children were dying each year before the age of five. [Samma rapport som ovan.]
The long march to literacy is nearing an end: three-quarters of people aged 15-25 were literate in 1975; now the rate is nearly nine-tenths.
A generation ago the biggest worry about poor countries was over-population. /.../ In the world as a whole, fertility has fallen from 4.8 to 2.6 in a generation (25 years). [Det kommer jag återkomma till.]
Last year the global economy entered its fifth year of over 4% annual growth—the longest period of such strong expansion since the early 1970s. /.../ Moreover, growth was spread around fairly evenly. According to the World Bank, national income in the European Union rose slightly more than in America for the first time in a decade. Growth in East Asia was 10%, in South Asia over 8%, in eastern Europe almost 7% and in Africa, thanks to the commodity boom, over 6%. [Tidigare skriver de även att studier visat att en enprocentig ökning i nettoinkomst per capita i fattiga länder leder till att den extrema fattigdomen minskar med 1,3 procent.]
The number of conflicts (both international and civil) fell from over 50 at the start of the 1990s to just over 30 in 2005. /.../ In total, the death toll in battle fell from over 200,000 a year in the mid-1980s to below 20,000 in the mid-2000s. [Den rapporten skrev jag om här.]
Nu ser visserligen världsekonomin något skakig ut för tillfället, och klimathysterikerna verkar vinna mark i sin strävan att sänka levnadsstandarden för såväl fattiga som rika, men jag skulle ändå bli förvånad om inte 2008 blir ett fantastiskt år att titta tillbaka på.
In China 25 years ago, over 600m people—two-thirds of the population—were living in extreme poverty (on $1 a day or less). Now, the number on $1 a day is below 180m. In the world as a whole, a stunning 135m people escaped dire poverty between 1999 and 2004. [Med reservation för Världsbankens reviderade siffror.]
Digging canals and building water-treatment plants has increased the number of people with access to safe water: in South Asia, for instance, the number of those without clean water has been nearly halved since 1990. [Enligt Unicef fick mer än 1,2 miljarder människor bättre tillgång till dricksvatten mellan 1990 och 2004 (från 78 till 83 procent av världens befolkning).]
In 2007 Unicef, the United Nations child-welfare body, said that for the first time in modern history fewer than 10m children were dying each year before the age of five. [Samma rapport som ovan.]
The long march to literacy is nearing an end: three-quarters of people aged 15-25 were literate in 1975; now the rate is nearly nine-tenths.
A generation ago the biggest worry about poor countries was over-population. /.../ In the world as a whole, fertility has fallen from 4.8 to 2.6 in a generation (25 years). [Det kommer jag återkomma till.]
Last year the global economy entered its fifth year of over 4% annual growth—the longest period of such strong expansion since the early 1970s. /.../ Moreover, growth was spread around fairly evenly. According to the World Bank, national income in the European Union rose slightly more than in America for the first time in a decade. Growth in East Asia was 10%, in South Asia over 8%, in eastern Europe almost 7% and in Africa, thanks to the commodity boom, over 6%. [Tidigare skriver de även att studier visat att en enprocentig ökning i nettoinkomst per capita i fattiga länder leder till att den extrema fattigdomen minskar med 1,3 procent.]
The number of conflicts (both international and civil) fell from over 50 at the start of the 1990s to just over 30 in 2005. /.../ In total, the death toll in battle fell from over 200,000 a year in the mid-1980s to below 20,000 in the mid-2000s. [Den rapporten skrev jag om här.]
Nu ser visserligen världsekonomin något skakig ut för tillfället, och klimathysterikerna verkar vinna mark i sin strävan att sänka levnadsstandarden för såväl fattiga som rika, men jag skulle ändå bli förvånad om inte 2008 blir ett fantastiskt år att titta tillbaka på.
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