Poverty: A wasted decade

Abstract

The thirteenth of the World Bank's World Development Reports (WDR 90) is on the subject of poverty. As such it represents a return to the topic of the third report in the series (WDR 80) which was on poverty and human development. In the decade which separates these two volumes the extent of poverty in the world has increased so that the 1980s are now being referred to as the lost decade. A growing concern over the failure to reduce poverty and, more especially, of the priority being accorded by the Bretton Woods institutions to external debt rather than internal destitution has led increasingly to concern over their policies and the impact that they have on the poor and vulnerable members of society. It is in this context that the United Nations Development Programme has produced the first of what promises to be an annual series of Human Development Reports (HDR 90). This paper reviews WDR 90 and HDR 90 and contrasts their respective positions. Both are considered here in the historical context of the major rethinking of development strategies which took place in the 1970s and it is suggested that the 1990 reports represent in many respects no more nor less than a return to positions which were established in their essentials some 10 years earlier. The debt crisis has, of course, been a major cause of the lack of progress in the interim. But the response to it has perhaps also been at fault, not least the response of the World Bank in conceding positions which it previously held and the analysis and research which was required to confront the evolving situation. There must therefore be some doubt as to how tenaciously the World Bank will keep to its rediscovered position. The coexistence in future of the Human Development Report is to be welcomed for that reason among others. In looking to the future, this paper ends with some thoughts on the staff work which is needed and topics to be addressed if both the WDR and HDR series are to fulfil their proper function of reporting on issues which must necessarily be entrusted to them for review because only they have such privileged access to the facts and the scale of resources which is needed for their analysis.