Globalization Generates Poverty
What can two dollars buy you? A small coffee at Starbucks, a candy bar, bag of chips, and a soda, a slice of pizza. For nearly three billion people, approximately half of the world 's population, two dollars a day is all the money that the person has to live on. Moreover, of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion grow up in poverty; 640 million without adequate shelter, 400 millions with no access to safe water, and 270 million with no access to health services (UNICEF 2005). One proposed reason for this harsh reality of high poverty rates is globalization - the growing integration of economies and societies around the world. The claim that globalization generates poverty has been the focus of many debates for the last twenty years, including the debate between Carlos Caretto, Gillian Crowl, Steve Grossman, and Annie Wong on February 21, 2005. Caretto and Crowl argued that poverty is an indirect result of globalization as is evident by high unemployment rates, wage inequality, and diminishing health and educational programs. Grossman and Wong contended that globalization does not generate poverty, but it in fact helps the world by promoting education, decreasing and shortening the length of wars, and increasing new resources. Close examination of the facts presented in lectures, readings, and the debates shows that each side presents logical evidence, but the facts confirm that globalization does in fact generate poverty.
Globalization does have positive effects that are felt throughout the world. If we look at the latter part of the 20th century alone, the evidence that globalization reduces poverty is overwhelming. Looking at a variety of measurements poverty, life expectancy, health, education more people have become better off at a faster pace in the past sixty years than ever before. And according to the World Bank, trade enabled the developing countries to grow at a rate of 4.3 percent per year during the 1990s, twice the rate of the developed
Globalization does have positive effects that are felt throughout the world. If we look at the latter part of the 20th century alone, the evidence that globalization reduces poverty is overwhelming. Looking at a variety of measurements poverty, life expectancy, health, education more people have become better off at a faster pace in the past sixty years than ever before. And according to the World Bank, trade enabled the developing countries to grow at a rate of 4.3 percent per year during the 1990s, twice the rate of the developed
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