For the past couple of months you’ve seen this book listed under “What I’m reading now” and I’m sure at some point some of you have questioned whether I was still reading this book. Well, I was and admittedly it took longer for me to read this one compared to other 300+ page books that I’ve whizzed through. This one took me longer because I really wanted to understand what macro-economist, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs,would craft as an answer to the problem of global poverty-and not just poverty, but abject poverty as well.
Obviously, I’m no economist. I picked the book up because I was interested in hearing solutions and namely what I could do in my own small way to eradicate abject poverty. I didn’t pick it up to read about economic histories of nations or to see line graphs detailing cereal yield and growth among low income countries. Now, I do understand that this information is important. After all, how can you devise a plan for moving forward if you don’t understand how things go the way they are. Further, I understand that this book was written for a broad range of people. Community activists, public policy officials, advocacy groups, and politicians among them – so Sachs had to put enough meat between the covers to appease everyone at the table. Even understanding all of this, the first nine chapters were really a chore for me to get through and I honestly would have to read them a second and maybe even a third time (with supplemental readings) to really understand what’s being communicated.
The action really started for me in Chapter 10. Not surprisingly, this chapter is about Africa ->The Voiceless Dying: Africa and Disease. Chapters 11,12,15-18 are also really good information packed chapters. In addition, Sachs holds no punches when talking about how miserably the U.S. has failed in following through with its commitment to join other nations in the U.N. to achieve the Millennium Development Goals – which propose to halve poverty by 2015.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:
“…the United States spent much in Iraq for two weeks of support for the war (about 2.5 billion) as it does for an entire year of economic development assistance in Africa” pg. 307
“The United States is spending thirty times more on the military than on foreign assistance in 2004, $450 billion compared with $15 billion.” pg. 329
“Of the limited aid that the United States gives, a large proportion of it goes to pay for U.S. experts (technical assistance) or for emergency relief and food grains rather than for long-term investments in infrastructure or education or health.” pg. 337
As far as his solutions for ending abject poverty for the most impoverished nations in the world, Sachs list a number of policy initiatives, but he also encourages individuals to get active by joining the Make Poverty History Campaign and spurring grassroots political action by amplifying the voices of the poor.
Sachs is targeting the younger generation by having Bono write his forward (very motivational by the way) and by teaming up with Angelina Jolie to visit certain countries in Africa. The visits were recorded for MTV’s The Diary of Angelina Jolie program. MTV also list some things that you can do to help.
So out of 5 stars, I give The End of Poverty 3. Unless your an economist or very well read in that area you might not follow too closely during much of his book. He should’ve also provided more suggestions as to what individuals or community groups could do to urge our representatives to take action.
A fellow blogger provided a review of this book as well. To check it out CLICK HERE.
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