Globalization and Poverty
Globalization and Poverty
Globalization and Poverty
Institutional Affiliation
Course Name
Globalization and Poverty
The purpose of this survey is to examine the association between globalization and
poverty. This comes against a background where a deal of scholarly work has recommended that
the global economic integration should seek to help the poorer nations, since they are capable of
producing goods that use unskilled man power. The author proposes a similar view, since
globalization can be defined as the process of moving people, businesses and other
organizations. Critics of globalization, such as Martel (2010), define it as the integration of poor
nations in to a world economy full of open competition. He describes it as the process which
allows the few to live with little to no worries about food, shelter and healthcare, while
remaining oblivious of the inequality gap. The debate on globalization, poverty and the increased
inequality centres on the premises that poverty and inequality are not synonyms, and that one can
rise or fall independent of the other. This essay argues that even though globalization has
wrought much havoc on the developing world, it has significantly contributed to the reduction of
poverty levels in these countries. I present the contrary perspective that globalization alone can
not account for the inequalities in the world, but that such matters ought to be introspected
For the sake of this paper, we will adopt World Bank’s definition of poverty. Poverty is
the state in which a society, or an individual has insufficient financial muscle to lead the most
basic decent life. One important conclusion from poverty is that the income from employment
and business is very low that basic human needs cannot be met. In this perspective, the poor
refers to the people whose resources are greatly limited that they are excluded from the lowest
acceptable way of life in their country. The poor lack proper housing, decent meals, safe drinking
water and proper medical attention. Different nations have different thresholds for poverty line.
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The World Bank categorizes poverty as any income that is less than $1.90 per day (World Bank
2020). This is the extreme poverty line. The categorization also considers the people living in
less than $3.20 a day and those living at $5.50 a day. This groups cumulatively account for 9.2%
at the extreme poverty, and abut 44% for the higher poverty lines.
Poverty becomes a global concern when introspected in regards to its causes, its effects
and its eradication. The World Bank oversees that close to half of the world poor live in areas
affected by fragility, conflict and violence, projecting the number to raise before the 2030.
Climatic change and population growth are also major causes of poverty in most of the nations.
The discussion on the cause’s poverty revolves around political causes, environmental
causes and man-made causes. For the purpose of this paper, we will only consider the two most
Fragility, conflict and violence are categorized as important causes of human suffering.
These often tend to bring about a great destruction of the social fabric and infrastructure. A
people who are insecure can not readily access the human basic needs of food, housing and
education. Conflicts either destroy the social amenities for providing such services, destroy the
roads to access such, or push people to places where it is hard to access these services. The
effects of Fragility, Conflict and Violence are so elaborately intertwined it would be hard to
describe each independently. Other than the obvious results such as scarce resources, threat to
human life, violence tends to spiral over its effects to economies in the neighborhood and abroad,
making it a serious global problem. For instance, the violence in Syria has brought more than
70% of its population to live below the poverty line. It has also created the largest refugee
population in the world, of about 6.5 million people. The foremost global problem brough about
by this is the humanitarian crisis. The nations surrounding Syria, and the world at large is obliged
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to act in such times to rescue innocent children and women facing starvation, death and gross
violation of human rights. Financial resource that would have been used for development
projects is used to cater for the effects of the war. It is estimated that the UN has collectively
send more than $32 billion to Syria to help with the humanitarian crisis, which is quite a big
Again, adverse environmental conditions can bring about poverty. Climatic change and
global warming are the most important causes of adverse climatic conditions around the world.
They are no longer viewed as imaginary threats, but a present and growing reality, that must be
handled urgently. Climatic change is responsible for hurricanes, droughts, floods and forest fires
that often run out of control, consuming millions of acres of arable land. The contrast is that
climatic change is primarily man-made. Statistics show that human influence accounted for
100% of Global warming from the 1950s (Hallegatte, 2016), with some arguing that it could be
slightly higher than 100%, since natural occurrences such as volcanoes could have cooled the
earth a little bit, cancelling out some of the human activity (Stilglitz 2015). The catastrophes that
come as a result of climate change wreck serious damage on the livelihood of the vulnerable
communities. For instance, droughts in the African continent often consume millions of
livestock, as well as the lives of many. The lack of grain for planting and making meals, the lack
of domestic animals for labor and financial exchange, as well as the inability of parents to
provide for their young ones owing to malnutrition, diseases or death is a sure path to extreme
poverty. The children, and few grown-ups who survive these busts of drought are too weak to
reclaim their lands for agriculture and often end up in vicious cycles of abject poverty.
Finally, probably the global factor that has wrought greatest damage in recent history
within the shortest time is the COVID-19 pandemic. After having being declared a global health
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emergency in early 2020, COVID-19 has threatened to crush the world economy, overwhelm the
Perhaps an important demerit to globalization would suggest that if the world was not as
closely connected, the Corona Virus would not have spread as fast, and would not have as many
lives as it has presently. Worldometers approximates that the virus has of 7th December 2020
killed more than 1.5 million people, after infecting more than 67 million people. The effects of
COVID-19 are twofold. On one end, the virus itself incapacitates productivity, takes a big deal of
both the national and personal budget and even brings about death. On the other end, the
measures such as social distancing have led to great downsizing of companies and left people
The debate on the best approach to combat COVID-19 surrounds vaccines and trying out
available medication. Nevertheless, there is need for the concerned parties to continually check
out on the measures taken, and see if they can improve on their governments. For instance, as
people are treated, governments should be keen to provide relief to their citizens.
The ongoing discussion goes a long way to show how one small action by one person or
a community in a distant country can adversely affect another person in another part of the globe.
When one pursues to cut down an entire forest, the effect ripples across the globe. When a
government opts to be oppressive and undemocratic, the ensuing rebellions affect the global
economy albeit in varying dimensions. It thus calls for a collective responsibility, for world
governments and individuals, as well as the developed and underdeveloped nations, for
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As noted earlier, the causes and effects of poverty only come as a result of deeper issues
which were neglected or taken for granted in a society. To combat this verse calls for political
and fragility. An oppressive government, even though stable, might eventually fall from
international pressure such as the case of Libya, or internal protests, such as in the Arab world of
Egypt and Syria. Thus, to tackle poverty, issues on governance should be approached and
handled with a perspective of helping the citizens of the land through equitable distribution of
resources, justice for all, and the improvement of the standards of living for its people (Martel,
2010).
In conclusion, we have seen the association between poverty and globalization. The
relationship is so intertwined sch that a change in one trigger a change in the other. That
globalization has the improvement of the standard of living as a primary concern, addressing
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References
Beaujouan, J. Rasheed, A, (2019). Syrian Crisis, Syrian Refugees: Voices from Jordan and
Hallegatte, S. (2016). Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty.
Mercy Corps (2019). How Climate Change Affects People Living in Poverty. Mercy Corps.
World Bank (2020). COVID-19 to Add as Many as 150 Million Extreme Poor by 2021. World
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-
as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021