Give reasons why the poor remain poor. Can you suggest solutions to this?

Last year, the world observes a healthy 5.1 per cent in the global economic growth rate. However, this seems to be solely contributed by the rich group and the poor remain poor. The world is changing at a fast pace but the poorer nations are often unable to catch up with the changes due to lack of technology and capitals. They are thus forced to remain backwards. As a result, aid from richer nations is essential in bringing the poorer nations out of poverty. Unfortunately, many richer nations refuse to help. Poverty remains also due to high unemployment rate in poorer nations. This problem is compounded by underemployment problem as well as inequality of opportunities in workforce, where only the rich has the reach to better jobs, keeping the poorer bunch remain in poverty.

Richer nations have the technology and capitals to carry out investment projects of large scale and hence, are able to remain rich or become wealthier. However, the poorer groups have little access to technology and capitals. Thus, it is difficult for them to keep up with the progress of the world that they remain in poor state no matter how hard they try. We thus need the richer one to offer some sorts of momentum and activation energy to the poorer one so that they would be able to join the global economic race and leave the cycle of poverty. Foreign aid is a necessity in achieving this. However, many richer nations are not willing to extent their helping hands. In 1961, a commitment was achieved in the rich world to provide aid to the poorest countries equal to 0.7 per cent of their gross national product (GNP). However, by the early 1990s, official development assistance was still around 0.33 per cent, and by 20000s, it declined to around 0.22 per cent. Countries like USA are not keeping to their commitment. USA is a leading power in the world and is supposed to serve as role model for the rest to follow. Sad enough, its contribution is just 0.15 per cent of it GNP, less than one quarter of the global target. Rich nations are unwilling to assist the poorer bunch and allowing them to suffer in their respective stagnant economy.

Another reason why the poor remains poor is that there is a lack of jobs. Unemployment problem is a common sight in poorer nations like Cambodia. The world population is growing, but certainly not the job market, as according to UN, the official unemployment has grown by 26 per cent in the past 10 years. One reason could be the lacking of investment and factories in the nations. In poorer nations, the priority is to feed the people. They are unlikely to have extra capital to investment to create jobs. As a result, they are likely to remain in poverty.

At national level, the inequality of opportunities in workforce keeps the poor in poverty. In nations like China, the richer tends to get richer and the poor tend to get poorer. The rich often have power and affiliation with authorities to exploit the poorer group to benefit them. For instance, the pay for a boy, who transports a wicker basket of raw coal all the way from the mine to the refinery plant, which is often miles away, is merely 1 RMB (S$0.20). Many are under employed because of this inequality that they earn less than they should. In China, the poor university undergraduates are more prone to unemployment than the rich ones, who may be from a less renowned university or have a lower degree.

In my opinion, in order to pull poor nations out of poverty, the richer nations have to keep to their promises and offer assistance in forms of technology and capitals. They can also invest in those poorer countries so as to make it a win-win situation. It helps to create jobs in poorer nations and at same time, create revenue for themselves. Food aid is a necessity for nations that are suffer from famine. By doing so, the nations can focus on economic development instead of worrying about how to feed their people. At the national level, the government should adopt a policy of meritocracy to ensure a level play in the workforce to give the poor equal opportunity in achieving a higher standard of living. Another solution would be to encourage entrepreneurship. By motivating people to be enterprises, together with foreign investment, a vast pool of jobs would be created for the mass.