Support the poor

The World Bank Group along with the UN Children’s Fund in a recent analysis gave a sobering reminder of the dire conditions under which a massive number of children are living in around the world. Over 356 million children, the report says, lived in extreme poverty before the Covid-19 pandemic. That is, one in six children globally, and needless to say, the number is set to worsen significantly in coming months. Eradicating poverty has been one of the most virtuous exercises being pursued for years. We’ve had a modicum of success in the last decade when the Millennium Development Goal to cut the global poverty rate by half by 2015 was in fact achieved in 2010. But to say that we are on track to eradicating global poverty by 2030 would be a stretch of the imagination. Rising inequality, pandemic driven joblessness, and impending automation that is rapidly letting machines take over lowskilled jobs would now make the task much harder to accomplish. It is a vicious circle, so to speak. Poverty robs children of their basic right to education which ultimately affords opportunities to live a better life compared with previous generations. But when the choice is between survival and education, there is hardly a choice at all.

Finding a way out of this quagmire is important. Supporting poor households with universal basic income could perhaps offer some solutions and lead to placing children into the classrooms thereby allowing future generations to thrive. But considering most of such households are in poor countries, the question is will their governments be able to implement this concept? Who should fund UBI in poor countries: respective governments or a collective aid programme from rich countries? Rich countries do not have the obligation to do this, and yet, directing funds to pull people out of the poverty trap and ensure basic education for all children in poor countries will eventually benefit the entire world and not just the aid-receiving countries.