No one wants to live in poverty. Few people would want others to do so. Yet, we find ourselves in a situation where millions of people worldwide live in poverty. Indeed, according to the World Bank in 2010, 1.2 billion people lived below the extreme poverty line with an income of US $1.25 or less a day and 2.4 billion lived on less than US $2 a day. Why is that? What has been done about it in the past? And what is being done about it now?
In this Very Short Introduction Philip N. Jefferson explores how the answers to these questions lie in the social, political, economic,...