Read Exodus From Hunger Online
Authors: David Beckmann
Tags: #Religion, #Christian Life, #Social Issues, #Christianity, #General
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it in his Nobel Prize lecture, “There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will.”
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KAREN JEFFERSON
As I think about the struggle to overcome poverty in this country, I think especially about Karen Jefferson. She served for several years as my executive assistant. Karen wrote about her determined climb from welfare to work in Bread for the World’s newsletter.
My story echoes those of many other young single moms who become pregnant and must care for a child with no job, no skills, and no support. I’m sure some people will argue that I could have gotten a job. That’s easier said than done when you are in that position. In my situation, welfare was the only sensible option. It was my saving grace in more ways than one.
I am passionate about helping less fortunate people, and having been on welfare has emphatically strengthened the way I feel. The experience humbled me tremendously and put a lot of things in perspective.
I found myself on welfare shortly after graduating from high school, and I was in the system for close to ten years. I had two children while on welfare, one at the age of nineteen and the other at twenty-two. I always knew that I would not be on welfare forever, and refused to believe that I would be caught up in the welfare trap for another ten years.
In order to break free, I knew that I would have to go to school and acquire job skills. So I did, taking extensive computer training. I put my all into it because I knew that my life and the lives of my children depended on it. I proudly graduated at the top of my class. I landed a job working as a senior administrative assistant making $29,500 a year. That’s a big jump from the $3,800 a year that I received while on welfare.
My welfare stint happened about ten years ago. Today, I am a thirty-eight-year-old proud mother of three beautiful girls who inspire me every day to keep moving in the direction that God is leading me. I know that without God’s guidance I would not be here today. I’m also the wife of a wonderful husband who I feel was sent to help me get to the place that God has destined for me. My husband is the support that I so longed for when I was younger.
I was delighted to serve as executive assistant to the president of Bread for the World. Bread has been one of the leading advocates in the fight to improve the welfare system.
I want to thank God (for I know where my help cometh). I also want to thank the taxpayers and Bread for the World members who advocated for funding for the welfare program over the years. I’m going to go on record saying that, one day, I will repay every penny that I borrowed from the government when I was on welfare in the hopes of helping someone else. That is my mission today!
Shortly after Karen wrote this essay, one of her daughters was diagnosed with cancer. Karen had to leave her job to take care of her daughter. Medical expenses and the loss of one parent’s income have stalled the upward mobility of Karen’s family, but their faith in God and determination to succeed remain intense. Another one of Karen’s daughters has enrolled in college.
The world has made—and can make—dramatic progress against hunger
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he global drive to overcome hunger and poverty in our time is a new phase of the global economic transformation that began with the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution started in England at the end of the eighteenth century. Innovations in technology and ways of organizing society spawned economic expansion and, over time, social improvements. This revolution spread through the rest of Europe and North America. Eventually, Japan and the Soviet Union mounted huge catch-up efforts.
Since the Second World War the world has been systematically pursuing development, and many developing countries have achieved rapid and sustained economic growth. Countries such as South Korea and Chile have now achieved a much higher level of economic development than countries such as Afghanistan and Bolivia. In some poor countries such as India or Kenya, a large class of people now has a standard of living comparable to the middle class in Europe and the United States.
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Even among countries that have not achieved much growth, widespread improvements in health and education have taken place.
But even as many poor people have been able to raise their standards of living, economic development has spawned growing inequality in many countries and made the whole world more aware of the extreme gap between rich and poor in the world. Disadvantaged groups and classes of people work—and sometimes fight—to claim a fair share of their nation’s wealth and income. Developing nations strive to catch up with the industrialized countries through economic development and by negotiating for more equitable international systems.
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This chapter is about seven diverse nations that have made clear progress against poverty—China, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Mozambique, Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom—and about lessons from their experiences.
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China’s progress against poverty has been spectacular. Five hundred million people escaped from extreme poverty between 1981 and 2004. The fraction of China’s population in extreme poverty has dropped from two-thirds to one-tenth. China’s achievement accounts for most of the global reduction of the number of people in poverty.
China’s strides against poverty are partly due to rapid and sustained economic growth. The Chinese economy has expanded by an average of 10 percent per year since the early 1980s.
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China’s embrace of some aspects of capitalism has made it a stronger economic and political power—and, in some ways, a competitor with the United States.
China’s increased reliance on markets began in rural areas, where most of China’s poor people live. In the 1980s China gradually allowed more families to farm their own plots. Over time the government also allowed rural people to set up their own enterprises or migrate to cities. About half of China’s progress against poverty is due to increased reliance on markets in rural areas.
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Poor people have also benefited from strong systems of education, health, and social welfare, a legacy from the years when China really was a socialist country. When my wife and I visited China in the early 1980s we were struck that nearly everybody looked healthy and adequately clothed—in contrast to India or Pakistan. Virtually all boys and girls now enroll in school, and 86 percent complete primary school.
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China still has big problems, notably its oppressive political system and tremendous environmental problems. Of the world’s twenty most polluted cities, sixteen are in China. About 70 percent of the country’s lakes and rivers are polluted. Acid rain plagues much of China and reaches into neighboring nations. The United States puts far more strain on the global environment than China, but China is overtaking the United States as the largest producer of greenhouse gases.
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When a French journalist named Pierre Haski visited a remote, predominately Muslim village in northern China, an impoverished mother thrust her thirteen-year-old’s diaries into his arms, hoping for help. Haski eventually published one of the girl’s diaries in the West,
The Diary of Ma Yan
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Yan’s diary chronicles her hard life and determination to succeed in school and the hunger that her mother endured to help pay for the girl’s schooling.
“I have to study well so that I won’t ever again be tortured by hunger or lack of money,” writes Yan. China’s policies have made it possible for many poor girls to go to school and opened other opportunities for hungry and poor people. But Yan’s diary gives us a glimpse into the sacrifice and effort of the many Chinese families who have seized these opportunities and worked their way out of poverty.
This island nation just east of India is very different from China, and its pattern of development has also been different. Sri Lanka’s poverty rate has been declining for the past two decades, despite a bloody war throughout this period between the government and rebels from the minority Tamil population.
Sri Lanka is a lower-middle-income country, poorer than Mexico or Malaysia, and economic growth has been steady but not rapid. Social programs have been the key to Sri Lanka’s social progress. Sri Lanka has long maintained exceptionally strong social programs, including a concerted effort to educate girls. The political will to support these efforts results from a combination of Buddhist culture, a staunch democratic tradition, and social democratic parties. Competition among political parties and an independent press and judiciary have also helped to hold the government and elites accountable to the people.
The civil war was a heavy expense, and the World Bank advised the current government to cut back on social spending. But they maintained or increased spending on social services like education, health, and nutrition. An expanded program of nutrition assistance rapidly reduced deaths among little children and their mothers.
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Despite high levels of poverty, the country has one of the lowest rates of childbirth deaths in the developing world.
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Literacy and school enrollment rates have improved. Safe water and sanitation systems are widespread. There is more social mobility than in many countries.
The civil war finally ended in May 2009, so Sri Lanka’s progress against hunger and poverty should accelerate. On the other hand, the current government is somewhat authoritarian, and human rights abuses have occurred.
Ghana is an African success story. In 1992 about 50 percent of the population lived on less than one dollar a day. By 2005 that had dropped to about 30 percent. The country is on track to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal: cutting poverty in half by 2015. After decades of economic decline and dictatorial rule, Ghana has achieved sustained economic growth, effective social programs, and democracy.
Ghana’s economy began to expand in the 1980s. Aid donors, impressed by improved development policies, reduced the country’s debt and provided substantial assistance.
Ghana returned from military rule to presidential elections in 1992. I lived in Ghana as a young man and returned thirty years later, just before the election of 2000. I was struck by the commitment of grassroots people to democracy. Even people who detested the government in power and thought it was biased against their own ethnic group were ready to accept the election results, one way or the other. The Catholic Church and some Protestant churches were campaigning against corruption to help make democracy work.
Ghana has also developed a strong press and an autonomous election commission. In the election of 2008 a coalition of civil society groups deployed cell phones and personal computers to provide independent information on what was happening at polls across the country. Nine million Ghanaians voted, and the ruling-party candidate lost by just forty thousand votes. Yet he peacefully ceded power to the opposition candidate, John Atta Mills. Northern Ghana has always been much poorer than southern Ghana, and Mills won big in the north.
In the first half of the last decade, Ghana almost doubled the percentage of its national budget devoted to reducing poverty, which included expanded investment in agriculture. In late 2009 the government announced a new strategy to help small-scale farmers become more productive and find markets for their crops. The United States and other aid donors have announced their intention to invest in this initiative.
Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world. It suffered a long civil war, financed partly by racist governments in Rhodesia and South Africa. But the government of Joaquim Chissano negotiated a peace agreement in 1992, and the violent opposition became the opposition political party. The government’s good economic management contributed to rapid economic and social development. Economic growth has averaged an impressive 8 percent per year since 1993,
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and the rate of poverty has dropped from 70 percent to 50 percent.
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President Chissano voluntarily stepped down in 2004, a peaceful transition that contributed to continued peace and development.
I met Chissano in Washington and was impressed by his humble manner and commitment. He spoke quietly of his years as a revolutionary and then as president. He communicated deep hope for Mozambique and Africa as a whole. Mozambique is a large, long country, so communication—let alone democracy—is a challenge. The country was fortunate to have a president of Chissano’s moral character.
When I later visited Mozambique I came to know many grassroots people who have contributed in their own ways to Mozambique’s progress against poverty. Pedro Kumpila is a prime example.
Pedro’s family fled to Tanzania during the war for independence, and Pedro spent most of his first fourteen years there. He returned home, but had to flee violence again—first to wilderness areas and then back to Tanzania. Once peace was established in 1992 Pedro’s family came back and rebuilt their lives. Pedro and his wife, Veronica, have four beautiful children, now ages thirteen to twenty.
When the AIDS epidemic came to rural Mozambique, people had no idea what was causing it. Many people suspected their family members of witchcraft. Parents with the disease could not work in their fields, and children were orphaned. Although Pedro’s family was not affected, Pedro wanted to help his community deal with this plague, so he took the lead in getting his church to start an AIDS action team.