In 1960 rich world per capita income was 32 times that in poor countries, but by 2000 Hickle says the ratio was 134 to 1. International inequality has also become worse. Pritchett of Harvard says the line should be $12.50. Hickle says that if we measured poverty by a more realistic $5 a day we would find that 4.3 billion are under the line, and we would find that the problem has actually become worse over time. He points out that most of the achievement has been in China, and that the gain has been in proportions of populations, not in absolute numbers, which he says for extreme poverty remain at 1 billion.Īnd that is based on a poverty line that is set far too low. In recent years it has been taken for granted that enormous gains have been made, lifting hundreds of millions out of despair and cutting the numbers in poverty in half since 1990, but Hickle gives strong case that poverty has not been reduced.

Hickle (2017) begins with a discussion of “development”, conceived by the Truman administration as the solution to Third World hunger and poverty. The history of inequality the creation of inequality. However I think Hickle’s discussion of alternatives is disappointing, and I want to suggest more effective options. It disputes the conventional faith that Third World poverty is being eliminated. It deals with the history of brutal colonial grabbing, the creation of global inequality and the way Neoliberal doctrine enables continued polite plunder today.

This book is excellent in its forthright account of the way the global economy has been structured by and for Western elites and consumers. The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions by Jason Hickle.

The divide jason hickel