Location: Home :: Books on Poverty :: The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

Need a quick gift? Try Amazon gift certificates.

Don't Forget To Visit:

The New Social Worker Online

SocialWorkJobBank

Online Continuing Education for Social Workers

Amazon.com Widgets

Related Categories

•	General AAS

Economics

Business & Finance

New & Used Textbooks

•	Business Development

Business & Finance

New & Used Textbooks

Custom Stores

•	General AAS

Business & Finance

New & Used Textbooks

Custom Stores

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

enlarge

Author: Jeffrey Sachs
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$17.00~~
Buy Used: $3.95
as of 11/21/2009 11:29 PST details
You Save: $13.05 (77%)

New (53) Used (135) from $3.95

Seller: stick_figure_books

Media: Paperback
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9

ISBN: 0143036580
Dewey Decimal Number: 339.46091724
EAN: 9780143036586
ASIN: 0143036580

Publication Date: February 28, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Features:

•	ISBN13: 9780143036586
•	Condition: NEW
•	Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
•	Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Similar Items:

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Development as Freedom

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs has a plan to eliminate extreme poverty around the world by 2025. If you think that is too ambitious or wildly unrealistic, you need to read this book. His focus is on the one billion poorest individuals around the world who are caught in a poverty trap of disease, physical isolation, environmental stress, political instability, and lack of access to capital, technology, medicine, and education. The goal is to help these people reach the first rung on the "ladder of economic development" so they can rise above mere subsistence level and achieve some control over their economic futures and their lives. To do this, Sachs proposes nine specific steps, which he explains in great detail in The End of Poverty. Though his plan certainly requires the help of rich nations, the financial assistance Sachs calls for is surprisingly modest--more than is now provided, but within the bounds of what has been promised in the past. For the U.S., for instance, it would mean raising foreign aid from just 0.14 percent of GNP to 0.7 percent. Sachs does not view such help as a handout but rather an investment in global economic growth that will add to the security of all nations. In presenting his argument, he offers a comprehensive education on global economics, including why globalization should be embraced rather than fought, why international institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank need to play a strong role in this effort, and the reasons why extreme poverty exists in the midst of great wealth. He also shatters some persistent myths about poor people and shows how developing nations can do more to help themselves.

Despite some crushing statistics, The End of Poverty is a hopeful book. Based on a tremendous amount of data and his own experiences working as an economic advisor to the UN and several individual nations, Sachs makes a strong moral, economic, and political case for why countries and individuals should battle poverty with the same commitment and focus normally reserved for waging war. This important book not only makes the end of poverty seem realistic, but in the best interest of everyone on the planet, rich and poor alike. --Shawn Carkonen

Product Description
A landmark exploration of the way out of extreme poverty for the worlds poorest citizens

Among the most eagerly anticipated books of any year, this landmark exploration of prosperity and poverty distills the life work of an economist Time calls one of the worlds 100 most influential people. Sachss aim is nothing less than to deliver a big picture of how societies emerge from poverty. To do so he takes readers in his footsteps, explaining his work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, while offering an integrated set of solutions for the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the poorest countries. Marrying passionate storytelling with rigorous analysis and a vision as pragmatic as it is fiercely moral, The End of Poverty is a truly indispensable work.

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 1-5 of 100

1 2 3 4 5 6 ...20 Next »

Sachs sets out to solve in Africa what he created in East Europe November 9, 2009
Matt
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Jeffrey Sachs' "shock therapy" free market economic policies plunged the newly-capitalist Eastern European states into an economic nightmare from which many of them still--20 years later--have not recovered. After engineering real-world poverty for millions of people, Sachs has the gall to write a book purporting to have the solution for ending poverty. But why would a person whose ideas created massive social poverty in the real world be given a second chance to solve poverty, even on paper? Especially when he espouses such novel ideas as, "send more foreign aid money". Wow--brilliant. Instead, how about engineering a social democratic economy that actually functions--including using strategic protectionism and state investment to protect and promote (respectively) infant manufacturing industries, so that no country is entirely dependent on selling raw materials or cheap agricultural goods as exports and buying all their sophisticated manufactured goods as imports? So that a sturdy social safety net is combined with increased national wealth, as well as some measure of national economic independence (which simply means creating a logical economic buffer, and in no way contradicts integration into the global market)?

If you are interested in how world poverty can be ended--not through paternalistic and ineffecual aid, but through genuine economic development--then I suggest you read a book like Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans. If you are enamored with Sachs' idea of simply pumping up aid money to the euphemistically termed "developing world", then I recommend you check out The Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business by Graham Hancock. And for some background on how big of a screw-up Sachs has been in the past at making recommendations to countries that want to develop, see "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.

Other books I recommend as general background to anyone interested in this topic include A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey, and Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century by Jeffry A. Frieden. The latter books imparts a solid understanding of the Bretton Woods system and the international finance agencies that arose from it, among other things. The David Harvey book gives a good overview of the ravages of Thatcherite-Reaganite ideology over the last few decades, and how these have resulted in a tremendous growth of inequality both between and within nations.

4 out of 5 stars

Noble Effort October 27, 2009
Rufus Burgess (Upstate, NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Jeffrey Sachs' 'The End of Poverty' is a noble effort to eliminate extreme poverty around the world. He creates a differential diagnosis that is meant to apply situational specific solutions to countries around the world.

When Sachs focuses on development theory, specifically why we need more aid, he truly shines. The developed world needs to cancel debt and institute drastically more aid (which would still only be .7% GNP).

Where Sachs fails is his distorted sense of history. Sachs' chapters on Bolivia, Poland, China, India, and Russia all omit VERY important facts and in some cases downright lie. Sachs sprinkles the book with quotes by Keynes but make no mistake: his policy prescriptions are straight from Milton Friedman. The affect of his policies were a disaster in Bolivia, Poland, and especially Russia (Read Naomi Klein's: The Shock Doctrine). Many development economists would strongly disagree with Sachs on the causes of success in India and China. Sachs views them as successful due solely to liberalization. That is at best misleading and at times wrong.

Sachs goes throughout the books saying how he has continually proved the critics wrong. In nearly every chapter he talks about how men opposed his ideas and how history has proved that he was correct. In reality, to a large degree, this has not happened.

Read 'The End of Poverty' but take it with a grain of salt.

5 out of 5 stars

Interested in learning what the world is doing to help less fortunate? This is the perfect stop August 29, 2009
Alma Sulejmanagic (NJ, USA)
I am a business student and over the summer started working for a non profit org who opened my eyes to what really matters. I wanted to know more and some of my friends recommended this book and I bought it in an instant and never regret it. This book is great, thought me so much and I love it. I know that in future, who ever is interested in non profits, I will recommend this book. Thank you Jeffrey Sachs

4 out of 5 stars

Controversial, A Must-Read August 21, 2009
Jennifer
This book makes a LOT of very controversial, and sometimes not fully substantiated, claims about the causes of and solutions to poverty. Sachs is an extreme idealist, and I have to believe he is wrong on a lot of things. If he were correct, there would already be much less poverty in the world. While I disagree with a lot of the ideas presented in this book, it is an absolute must-read for anybody interested in development economics or poverty alleviation.

5 out of 5 stars

Ending extreme poverty in the world is possible! July 14, 2009
George Fulmore (Concord, California USA)
The Christian Gospel quotes Jesus as saying that the poor will always be amongst us, which seems to make any eradication of poverty in the world hopeless. But the book "The End of Poverty" gives one hope that world poverty can, in fact, be eliminated, at least at the "extreme poverty" level. And the book gives us a wealth of factual information to make the problem more understandable...and not so hopeless. I highly recommend the book to those who seek to be better versed in knowledge of poverty in the world.

Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. 2002 to 2006, he was the Director of the United Nations Millennium Project Millennium Development Goals. He is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post.

In the book's preface, Sachs tells us that his purpose for writing the book is primarily to promote the idea that world poverty (later defined as "extreme poverty) can be eradicated in "our time." He tells us:
* More than 20,000 people die each day of extreme poverty
* The $450 billion per year (actually more) that the U.S. spends on its military is about 30 times more than the U.S. spends per year to help the poorest of the poor
* Ending poverty is a better way to seek peace than the military solution
* The $15 billion the U.S. spends per year to help the poorest of the poor is but a tiny percentage of the U.S. income

And, in an early chapter, he gives us some basic statistics on poverty in the world:
* About 1 billion people live in extreme poverty, living on pennies per day
* About 1.5 billion live in poverty, or above mere subsistence
* Another 2.5 billion or so live in the middle-income world
* The remaining 1 billion people live in the high-income world
* Those in extreme poverty tend to be caught in a "poverty trap"

Some good news is that the number of those in extreme poverty has dropped from about 1.5 billion in 1981 to about 1.1 billion today, despite an increase in the total number of people in the world. He also tells us that most people who live in extreme poverty live in East Asia, South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. (Surprising to me is that the percentage of those living in Latin America in extreme poverty is only about 10 percent.) But between 1981 and 2001, the numbers of those living in extreme poverty in East Asia have dropped significantly, while those in South Asia have remained about the same, with the numbers doubling in Sub-Saharan Africa. Clearly, extreme poverty in the world is being concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Some valuable insight is in the history of world poverty. Per Sachs, until the early 1800's just about everyone in the world was dirt poor. Life expectancy was low, relative to today's ages, and most were living as farmers. As the world entered the modern economic growth, the population of the world rose accordingly, not really taking off much until 1800. Then, there were about 900 people in the world. Thus, says Sachs, "The gulf between the world's rich and poor countries is therefore a new phenomenon."

It is here, that Sachs hopes to add insight. He would claim that economic development is not a zero-sum game. Everyone can win. The rich have NOT gotten rich because the poor have gotten poor - or because the poor have been exploited by the rich. No, technology is what is behind the long-term increases in income in the new world: the steam engine, chemical fertilizers, electricity, etc. And it was Britain that advanced the first, due to factors including its low cost of sea transportation, its relative social and political stability and its abundance of coal. As food production rises, fewer and fewer need to be farmers, and the division of labor increases. A second wave of industrialization emerges by the end of the 1900's, with Europe dominating in this first age of globalization.

Says Sachs, "There is no single explanation for why certain areas of the world remain poor, there is also no single remedy." But for those caught in the "poverty trap," there is no way out without help. These people lack roads, trucks, irrigation channels and power. They have no capital, and no way to save. Over time, those caught in this poverty trap get poorer and poorer. And in Sub-Saharan Africa, they have the entrenched problem of malaria, plus a geography that makes it more difficult to escape the poverty trap.

The poor also have an innovation gap for a variety of reasons, and the countries with extreme poverty get stuck with the highest fertility rates. Two countries with dramatically reduced fertility rates over the past 30 years or so are Bangladesh and Iran. In general, there is an inverse relationship between the fertility rate and the GDP per capita.

Per Sachs, the most important determinant of poverty is the ability/inability to raise food. Over the past several decades, Asian countries have been able to increase food production and to participate in the "green revolution." This can be followed by higher literacy and lower fertility rates. In contrast, those trapped in rural farming communities are "caught in a spiral of rising populations and stagnant or falling food production, per person." Per Sachs, the first goal is to put an end to extreme poverty; the second is to give those still poor a "chance to climb the ladder of development."

Sachs is fully supportive of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations. He gives us a full chapter about the mechanics of this, before launching into five chapters on economic/poverty details involved with five countries: Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China and India. Then, there are two chapters on Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by a chapter about how the George W. Bush administration shifted its attention from world poverty to the War in Iraq.

The final seven chapters of the book detail Sachs' arguments for implementing an end to extreme poverty in the world. The titles of the chapters speak for themselves:
* On-the-ground solutions for ending poverty
* Making the investments needed to end poverty
* A global compact to end poverty
* Can the rich afford to help the poor?
* Myths and magic bullets
* Why we should do it
* Our generation's challenge

Despite the depth and breadth of information contained, I found the book to be a pleasant read. Ideas and information are repeated, but in a reinforcement way. And I found the book, ultimately, to be up-lifting. I'll end this review with some quotes that may prove that point:

"The poor countries must take ending poverty seriously, and will have to devote a greater share of their national resources to cutting poverty rather than to war, corruption, and political infighting....Many poor countries today pretend to reform while rich countries pretend to help them."

"Boring as it may seem, we need to fix the `plumbing' of international development assistance....these pipes are clogged or simply too narrow...."

"Ghana (my note: where President Obama recently visited) is one of the best governed and managed countries in Africa....Ghana took seriously the Millennium Development Goals."

"...success in ending the poverty trap will be much easier than it appears."

"...the Millennium Development Goals can be financed within the bounds of the official development assistance that the donor countries have already promised."

"Eliminating poverty at the global scale is a global responsibility that will have global benefits....I reject the plaintive cries of the doomsayers who say that ending poverty is impossible."

"The movements against slavery, colonialism, and racism share some basic features....Ultimately, with a sudden shift in public attitudes, they transformed the impossible into the inevitable. In the same way, the end of poverty will come quickly, marked by a rapid transition."

Showing reviews 1-5 of 100

1 2 3 4 5 6 ...20 Next »

CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.

Copyright 2009 White Hat Communications.
Disclaimer: The products referenced on this site are manufactured and sold by parties other than The New Social Worker/White Hat Communications. We make no representations regarding either the products or any information vendors offer about their products.

Visit our poster store for unique social issues posters.

Amazon.com Widgets