The Challenge of World Poverty

Course Overview

This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labour—or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is microfinance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene? This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. Questions such as the following are explored through lecture, discussion, reading, and writing:

• Is extreme poverty a thing of the past?
• Why do some countries grow quickly while others fall further behind?
• Are famines unavoidable?
• How do we make schools work for poor citizens?
• How do we deal with the disease burden?
• Is microfinance invaluable or overrated?
• Should we leave economic development to the market? Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)?
• Does foreign aid help or hinder?

Grading

Grading rubric for written assignments (PDF)

Final Exam

Forty points of the grade will be based on a final exam to be administered in the final exam week. The exam will be based on the required readings throughout the year as well as the lecture material covered in class and recitations. It will be a mixture of multiple-choice and written questions and take three hours or less.

Written Assignments

Thirty points of the grade will be based on five short written assignments that you will be expected to hand into the TA at recitations. Each written assignment will be approximately 500 words in length and should be focused on a lecture's required reading material. The course material described above is broken down into 26 lectures organized around 10 topics (Introduction, Consumption, Education, Health, Family, Insurance, Credit, Savings, Entrepreneurship, and Political economy). There will be one written assignment proposed, therefore, per topic. The assignment for each topic is due to the first recitation to occur after the last lecture that covers that topic. Your grade on these written assignments will be based on the best five written assignments that you submit over the year. The subject of these written assignments can be either: (a) your answer to a question that has been suggested by the TA on each lecture's required reading; or (b), an opinion piece on a topic of your choice (be sure it's something you find interesting) related to the lecture's required reading (feel free to discuss this in advance with your TA if you like). In either case, you are expected to state a thesis up front, discuss why your reader should care about the topic you've chosen, and argue in favour of it. A book report or other type of non-critical summary is not acceptable. These assignments are to be completed individually and in your own words. Because 500 words are very short your written argument should be concise and punchy, and be high on content and opinion. It will take some time to compose one possible strategy is to write a 1000 word piece and edit it down to 500 words so that you are left with only the essential argument. Examples of Potential Paper Topics

• Foreign aid should be limited to countries with good governance.
• The one dollar-a-day poverty standard is misleading and should be abandoned.
• Local accountability is critical to providing effective education.
• National standards, funding, and accountability are the keys to improving education.
• Microfinance institutions need to be closely regulated.
• Excessive regulation will kill microfinance.