World Hunger and Poverty

By definition, a person is poor who does not have access to basic necessities, which in capitalist societies usually means they cannot afford these basic necessities.
I believe these basic necessities include sufficient food, clothes, shelter, health care, retirement, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance. The sum of the cost of those basic necessities is the […]

My good friend sent me the following quote from an article in his local paper:
A family of four in England tips the scales at a combined 1,100 pounds. They can’t–don’t want to?–work, so they live off taxpayers, collecting the equivalent to take-home pay of $42,000, on top of the “free” universal health care for assorted […]

Increasing prices of energy and food have worsened and will continue to worsen the problems of world hunger and poverty. Even in first world countries such as the United States, rising food prices and inflation have made poor people poorer, have put more people at greater risk of poverty, and have worsened the financial conditions […]

Throughout my unprofessional studies of history and geopolitics, I have come to the conclusion that young people tend to start, push and lead the most effective and positive social movements. For example, consider the hippies, yippies, and such in the United States, namely in the 60s and 70s.
I believe young people tend to have the […]

The people of the world would benefit in many ways by reducing or eliminating global poverty and by increasing education levels.
I believe less poverty and more education would reduce violent crime and other forms of criminal victimization. Poor and uneducated people tend to turn to crime and anti-social behavior more often. The same happens […]

Oxford University economist Professor Paul Collier’s book about poverty has won the prestigious Lionel Gelber Prize for 2008. The book’s title explains its subject rather well: The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
According to the description, the book investigates and attempts to explain why traditional approaches […]

UN officials named the biggest challenges to meeting poverty reduction goals as the rising prices of food and energy as well as global warming.
The demand for oil will continue to increase as countries all over the world continue to industrialize and develop. Of course, we continue to use up more and more of our limited […]

I often stress the importance of education and raising children in the fight against poverty. Education empowers people, and people empowered with education will have the skills to take care of themselves, to take care of their families, and to help uplift society as a whole.
We do need to find large-scale ways to provide education […]

I think those of us who work for poverty alleviation would benefit from trying harder to define poverty.
Common misconceptions about poverty hinder the social movement to eradicate poverty. I think we can often trace the misconceptions to a misunderstanding of what the word poverty means in the socioeconomic context.
I think finding a accurate and […]

At the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates said that we need to revise capitalism so that it also serves poor people, which he calls creative capitalism.
I usually avoid suggesting “capitalism” as a way to alleviate poverty, because so many people have such different interpretations of what the word means, and because “capitalism” usually seems to […]