Exodus From Hunger (8 page)

Team members went door-to-door to talk with families about HIV, how to avoid it, and how to find out if you have it. Now that medication for HIV/AIDS is available, team members help patients travel to the clinic. Pedro and his team sometimes talk with their local chief about village problems or work through their church’s diocesan office to raise issues with the district health office.

President Chissano and Pedro Kumpila have contributed in two very different, but both important ways to Mozambique’s development.

Brazil is an emerging power in the world. Here, hunger is due to extreme inequality. The richest fifth of Brazil’s population owns 61 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom fifth owns just 3 percent.
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With the largest population in Latin America, Brazil also has the largest number of hungry people.

In the late 1980s, soon after Brazil emerged from a long period of military rule, I helped the World Bank connect with civil society groups—Catholic and other religious institutions, environmental groups, labor unions, farmer associations, and others. I was struck that nearly all civil society groups were preoccupied by hunger, poverty, and inequality. I met with people who were focused primarily on other issues such as the environment or population growth, but they understood that in Brazil progress on these issues depends on progress against hunger and poverty.

After decades of dictatorship, government workers were used to keeping official business secret, and civil society groups were used to working on their own or protesting from the outside. The strong, often radical civil society movement that grew up under the Brazilian dictatorship helped to achieve democracy. This same movement later brought President Luiz Inácio da Silva—known as Lula—to power.

“If at the end of my term every Brazilian person has three meals a day,” said Lula in his inaugural address, “I will have fulfilled my life’s mission.” He probably won’t achieve that goal, but he has already reduced hunger in Brazil and is a champion among the world’s political leaders for measures to help reduce hunger globally.

Lula worked for years as a union activist, but his policies as president have been supportive of business, and the economy has thrived. Lula also committed Brazil to Fome Zero—Zero Hunger—and expanded safety-net programs. A new Ministry of Social Development and Hunger Eradication manages many programs, including the Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) programs, which are the government’s flagship effort against hunger.

The Bolsa Familia includes food stamps and a gas subsidy. One program provides assistance to families with school-age children, but only if their children regularly attend school. Another program provides assistance to families with small children, but only if the mother regularly takes them to a clinic and participates in nutrition classes. The Bolsa Familia programs have reduced poverty and inequality and improved school attendance and child nutrition.
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Lula’s antihunger campaign also invites citizens and nonprofit groups to get more engaged. Fome Zero calls upon every Brazilian to play a role in eradicating hunger via a “major national solidarity movement” aimed at those in need of food assistance. Through the Mutirão (community-based collective campaign), Brazilians are urged to donate food and money to local charities or to Fome Zero itself. Some citizens and companies contribute to the government’s Fund to Fight and Eradicate Poverty.
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The National Food Security Council engages civil society in the formulation and evaluation of policy.

Mexico has successfully reformed what its government does to reduce hunger and poverty. Traditionally Mexico’s antipoverty programs were concentrated in urban areas, even though there was more poverty in rural areas. Their main thrust was subsidies for tortillas and other food, which benefited many people who weren’t poor. Successive governments launched their own programs to benefit the groups that voted for them, and corruption in the administration of social programs often occurred.

Mexico’s renewed effort to fight hunger and poverty began in economic and social crisis. In 1994 violence erupted in Chiapas, a poor southern state where much of Mexico’s indigenous population lives. In 1995 the country suffered a financial and economic crisis. The political climate was also changing: Mexico’s long-term ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), was losing control while state governments were becoming more important.

In 1996 the government eliminated food subsidies and launched a new program called Oportunidades (“opportunities”). Oportunidades provides subsidies to families, but (like the Bolsa programs in Brazil) only if the families keep their children in school and get them regular medical attention.

The program combined decision making at the top of the federal government with decentralized implementation. Oportunidades initially focused on a small number of rural areas, which allowed it to develop in a disciplined way, relatively free of the corruption that had marred earlier programs. From the beginning the program included a system to evaluate impact.

In 2000 a non-PRI candidate won the presidency for the first time in almost seventy years. President Vicente Fox represented the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). Oportunidades had demonstrated its effectiveness, and the Fox government continued to expand it. By 2005 it was operating everywhere in the country. One in four Mexicans receive assistance through Oportunidades.

In 2006 Felipe Calderón, now leading the PAN party, narrowly defeated Andres Obrador of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). The PRD is strong in the poor southern states of Mexico and promised to expand what the government does for poor people. Obrador disputed the election, and his PRD staged big and disruptive demonstrations in Mexico City. Oportunidades has benefited from ongoing political pressure to reduce poverty, coupled with minimal political interference in how the program operates.
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The achievements of Oportunidades are well documented and impressive:

Mexico’s economy has gone through booms and busts, but income per capita has grown by an average of 1.7 percent annually since 1990.
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The flow of migrants to the United States has helped. In 2007, family members abroad sent $25 billion back to Mexico.
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On the other hand, the violent gangs that grew up around the sale of drugs into the United States are a fearsome problem.

The United Kingdom also has been making progress against poverty. Even before its recent efforts, the United Kingdom had reduced poverty below the levels we take for granted in the United States. But poverty is more widespread than in the rest of northern Europe, and it increased in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s.

When Tony Blair led the Labour Party to power in 1997 he set the goal of ending child poverty in Britain within twenty years. The government increased the payments it makes to families with children and subsidies for child care. The British government increased the minimum wage and required employers to provide more flexibility to workers with children, and it tightened the enforcement of child support from absent parents.

The government also launched a new program of baby bonds, in which the government gives each newborn a bond that he or she can cash at age eighteen for education or to start a business. Family members can add to the value of the child’s account, and the baby bonds have successfully encouraged increased saving.

As of 2008, 1.8 million people, including six hundred thousand children, had been lifted out of poverty. The Conservative Party now also embraces the goal of ending child poverty by 2020. Conservative Party leader David Cameron is adamant:

Recession has been a big setback, but the coalition government elected in 2010 remains committed to ending child poverty. As they have cut spending, they increased the child tax credit to protect poor children.
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If countries as different as these—China, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Mozambique, Mexico, Brazil, and Britain—can reduce poverty, it is possible almost anywhere.

These seven country cases show that economic growth and programs focused on reducing poverty are both necessary. Some people dismiss focused efforts to reduce poverty as wasteful giveaway programs, but such programs and policies need not be inefficient or weaken incentives to work. For others, “economic growth” suggests environmental neglect and trickle-down economics, but growth can be environmentally sustainable and benefit all income groups.

These cases also show that healthy societies are more likely to achieve sustained progress against hunger and poverty. Peace and security were preconditions to progress against poverty in nearly all these societies. Sri Lanka is the only country in this group that improved the conditions of poor people in the midst of ethnic violence. Malaysia isn’t featured here, but it’s an interesting case because a massive affirmative-action program for a disadvantaged ethnic group—the majority Malays—was a prime driver of Malaysia’s overall progress against poverty.

Democracy contributed to success in Sri Lanka, Ghana, Mozambique, Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. By democracy, I mean not only elections but also respect for civil rights, accountable institutions, and an active civil society. China’s lack of democracy leaves it more vulnerable to social turmoil in the future. Indonesia might have been included as a success story, but lack of democracy set the stage for financial crisis, social turmoil, and a resurgence of poverty in the late 1990s.
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Environmental neglect can also undercut development over the long term. This is another point of vulnerability for China in particular.

Setting specific goals makes a difference. Brazil committed itself to Zero Hunger, and Lula is enlisting civil society in the Zero Hunger campaign, so that the commitment will outlive his government. The United Kingdom has committed itself to ending child poverty within twenty years, and the two largest political parties are committed to the goal, so effort should continue despite the change of government in 2010.

Most of the seven countries achieved progress against poverty only after a period of severe problems. In China the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution had been economic and political disasters. Ghana had been through decades of economic decline and dictatorship, Mozambique suffered exploitative colonialism and then sixteen years of warfare, and Mexico went through a severe recession and an uprising in its poorest state. Brazil experienced decades of dictatorship.

In each case, citizens knew their country was in trouble. That set the stage for change. Our own country is at a moment like that now—a teachable moment. Maybe the severe problems we face now can become the launching point for changes that will make the United States a better, stronger nation for many years to come.

Perhaps the main lesson for the United States from these countries that have reduced poverty is the importance of government and political commitment. In every one of these countries, the national government established policies that were designed to reduce poverty. Most of the required effort came from poor people themselves, and businesses and other organizations of society played important roles. But in each case the government maintained a framework for society-wide effort. In most cases, a series of governments sustained the national commitment to development and poverty reduction over a period of decades.

These case studies also demonstrate the important role our government has in poverty reduction around the world. The expansion of development assistance by the United States and the other industrialized countries over the past ten years has powerfully helped to reduce poverty in Ghana, Mozambique, and Sri Lanka. U.S. government leadership has also played a big role in developing an increasingly open international economy, and international commerce has been important to economic progress in all seven of these countries.

T
he global escape from hunger and poverty is an economic, political, and cultural movement. The great majority of the earth’s people are working hard to escape from economic hardship. Their labors are supported, and sometimes undercut, by massive processes of economic development—factories, farms, mines, and telecommunication; lots of creative people figuring out better ways to do things; and constant debates about the rules of the game.

There’s a political dimension to the movement against hunger and poverty. Poor people and their allies all over the world are pushing for rules that will work better for them. Their struggles are interconnected with activism on related issues such as environmental protection and the rights of ethnic minorities. In many countries, overcoming hunger and poverty has become an important goal of the national government.