“It is important to remember that all poverty is local.” Beyond a mere repurposing of Tip O’Neill’s famed quip about politics, this line from the UN’s 2009 report “Rethinking Poverty” is an impressive understatement of a powerful fact. To understand an individual’s locality is to understand why that person lives, and could continue to live, in a state of poverty.
Private Investors Can Help End Poverty. They Just Need to Think Small and Local.
Lessons from the United Nations Capital Development Fund.
February 09, 2021
Summary.
Infrastructure investment can not only combat the poverty of today — it has the potential to stave off the poverty of the future. And yet only $6 billion of private infrastructure investment went to the world’s poorest countries between 2010 and 2019 — that’s less than 1% of the total $1.1 trillion invested during that period. This remarkable dearth of financing took place during a historic period of loose monetary policy, in which central banks flooded global markets with liquidity. The authors argue that now is the time to incentivize investors to direct capital towards promising infrastructure projects in low-income countries.