The Poorest Billion

Abstract

Despite the substantial progress that has taken place since the end of the Second World War in practically every country of the world, there are vast numbers of people in the low-income countries who live in abject poverty without adequate nutrition, shelter, health care, education or job security. The largest concentration of them — some 630 million in 1975 according to the World Bank’s recent report on World Economic Development — is to be found in the low-income countries of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where a little over half of the total population is denied even the basic minimum necessities of life — life not of comfort or even ease, but simply tolerable enough to preserve a modicum of human efficiency and dignity. It is now customary to say that in such a situation, we need a radical departure from the earlier strategy of concentration on growth only and that we should devise a new one which is designed specifically to eliminate absolute poverty in the foreseeable future.

Remarks at the annual session of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science, Colombo, December 1978.