Traditional Poverty Solutions

Experts who have studied the causes and conditions of poverty identify four major and quite different strategic paths to reducing poverty:

1. Economic growth strategies focus on building the rate of economic development through sound investments and job creation.
2. Redistribution strategies make sure that the rich assume a larger burden in helping to create needed schools, health facilities, and other institutions and services to help the poor improve their lot in life.
3. Massive foreign aid argues that poor countries could never grow their economies fast enough or mange enough redistribution to help most of their poor. These poor countries, it is believed, need major injections of foreign aid from the rich countries to provide relief and trigger economic development.
4. Population control advocates point out that poor families give birth to proportionately more children than rich families, which has the effect of keeping them poor. They call for national measures to influence the poor to have fewer children, including birth control, education for women and creating more job opportunities.

We believe that no antipoverty program can be effective by employing only one of these four strategies, that successful antipoverty programs require a mix of efforts and investments, and an integrated approach including all three sectors: public, private and nonprofit.