Challenges of Global Poverty

This course aims at helping students better understand the lives of the world's poor and explore scopes for policies to help improve the their wellbeing. 

The key questions addressed here are:

• The nature and distribution of poverty across regions and countries of the world.
• The causes of persistent/chronic poverty.
• The progress that has been made so far on the millennium declaration of "making poverty a thing of the past"
• The question of whether poverty alleviation be left to the forces of free market or whether there be a role for policy.
• What the empirical findings say about which policies are successful and which are not.
• The role of institution building in the fight against poverty.

On completion of the course the student should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

 The student..

• knows the key facts about the worldwide incidence of poverty.
• has a comprehensive understanding of the theories of what causes persistent/chronic poverty, for example, the theories of:

- the "poverty trap" model

- the absence of a market for credit, insurance and savings leading to lack of investment

- weak institutions leading to ineffective policies

• knows the basics of modern methodology for evaluating poverty policies.

Skills

The student

• knows how to numerically calculate and graphically represent (when appropriate) various measures of poverty, inequality and human-development
• is able to apply various tools of analyses learned in this course to explain outcomes pertaining to poverty.

 General competence

The student

• is able to understand and critically evaluate relevant academic literature.