CGI's Call for Integrated Solutions I: How About a Broader Perspective on Poverty?

All day yesterday, I capitalized on the opportunity to unabashedly promote the asset building framework by putting a spotlight on its prominence in poverty alleviation discussions and commitments here at CGI. And I actually barely skimmed the surface of some of the specific asset-focused activities coming out of these sessions (Habitat, others). As much as I relished it, I also want to acknowledge that asset building and financial services for the poor are one piece of poverty alleviation in a complex global environment. The specific commitments are great, but what about the larger perspective?

Yesterday's afternoon CGI held a plenary on profits, jobs and equitable growth. The stifling of poverty alleviation around the world is not simply due to lack of access to effective financial services, but also to lack of access to property, to opportunity, to education and to healthcare. Exclusion from any combination of these often results market inefficiencies, slack productivity, an inability for an individual to live to their full human potential. Hernando de Soto called for property rights and legal empowerment of the poor to give them the tools they need to achieve their version of the American Dream.

Still wearing me asset-building hat, I applauded when members were reminded of the threat and persistence of poverty traps, but were instead described as inequality traps. But the panel didn't go far enough: the term "inequality" was largely used in the context of income. In fact, President Clinton remarked that income inequality has increased every year in the United States since 1973. This seems a dramatic statement, but imagine how much more impact it would have had if he had instead stated the rise of wealth inequality, much starker (by some estimates 50 times more) than income inequality.

If we are going to develop any successful, integrated solutions to poverty alleviation (the subject of this morning's plenary too, and more to come on that), then the very least we could do is stop describing poverty so very narrowly as a lack of income. Instead, why not describe it as a lack of assets (financial, human, social) that the enterprising poor can leverage in any number of ways to improve their lives?