The Causes of World Poverty

Reflections on
Thomas Pogge’s Analysis*
Luigi Caranti

Abstract: While global poverty is the key moral problem of our

times, social scientists are far from reaching a consensus on the
causes of this disaster and philosophers disagree on the related
responsibilities. One important contribution toward an enlarged
understanding is offered by Thomas Pogge in World Poverty and
Human Rights (2008). The present paper discusses critically Pogge’s
contribution and attempts to distinguish the valuable intuitions from
the unwarranted conclusions that could be derived from them and
that Pogge himself suggests at times. Foremost among these is the
thesis that minor changes of the present global order would suffice to
remove most world poverty. While it is sceptical about this strong
conclusion, the paper confirms, unlike preceding discussions of
World Poverty and Human Rights (Patten 2005: 19-27; Cruft 2005:
29-37; Anwander 2005: 39-45), the book’s basic philosophical con-
clusion, namely, that affluent individuals and governments hold neg-
ative obligations toward the global poor.
Keywords: Causal Explanation, Global Order, Local/Global
Factors, Moral Responsibilities, Thomas Pogge, World Poverty

Global poverty generates an amount of human suffering unmatched

by any tragedy you may name, in recent or remote times. If you
summed the poverty related deaths since 2006, the resulting figure
would outnumber the victims of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Stalin’s
repression and the Nazi Holocaust put together. Global poverty is the
key moral problem of our times. One would, therefore, expect there to
be a solid science (economic and social) that studies it with an eye to
indicating possible solutions. One would also expect considerable
agreement among philosophers regarding the responsibilities for such
disaster and clarity as to the resulting obligations. Unfortunately

Theoria, December 2010 doi:10.3167/th.2010.5712503

The Causes of World Poverty 37

things are otherwise. The empirical analysis of global poverty is far

from reaching much agreement on causes and remedies. And, partly
as a consequence, philosophers are very divided concerning who
(individuals or groups) might be responsible. Humanity can map its
own genome, cure the most insidious illnesses, extract energy from
the most diverse sources and yet is unable (or perhaps unwilling?) to
solve the greatest problem it faces. Or so it seems.
Things would look much better if there were at least a shared inter-
pretation of the causal mechanism behind the creation and persis-
tence of world poverty. What creates global poverty and impedes its
eradication? Is it climate, availability of resources, cultural forma-
tions, political institutions, or religions? Are local factors, such as tra-
ditions or indigenous moral views, the cause or are global factors
such as the rules that currently govern global trade and intellectual
property more powerful instigators of poverty? Or is it some (still
unknown) combination of some or all of these elements? We need to
reach a shared ‘causal chart’ that depicts which factors create poverty
and their interconnections. And we need to identify not only which
factors create poverty, but also to attribute specific weights to each
cause. If some relevant factors are neglected, any practical measure to
eradicate world poverty ensuing from our analysis would be like
fighting unemployment by providing education and training while
disregarding investment. Or, if you prefer a medical metaphor, it
would be like curing a high rate of heart attacks in a population by
looking at cigarette consumption while disregarding diet and exercise.
What we need then is a clear view on all the relevant causes behind
the human tragedy.
In World Poverty and Human Rights Thomas Pogge (Pogge 2008)
provides a crucial contribution in this direction by highlighting fac-
tors usually overlooked or underestimated. Pogge identifies features
of the international and global order that powerful countries have
been shaping in the last 30 years that, he argues, are connected to the
wretched conditions of millions of people worldwide. The connection
is evidently a causal connection. The conclusion is that we — citizens
and governments of the affluent countries — harm the global poor
and therefore have quite stringent obligations toward them, obliga-
tions that go well beyond a generic duty of assistance and must be
construed as negative duties (do not harm and, if you did, compensate
for the harm you caused).
The present paper analyses critically Pogge’s crucial contribution
and attempts to distinguish the valuable intuitions presented there,
38 Luigi Caranti

which enlarge our comprehension of the causal mechanism behind

world poverty, from the unwarranted conclusions that could be
derived from those intuitions, and that Pogge himself at times sug-
gests. Unlike preceding discussions of World Poverty and Human
Rights (Patten 2005: 19-27; Cruft 2005: 29-37; Anwander 2005: 39-
45), the paper affirms the book’s basic philosophical conclusion,
according to which we (affluent individuals and governments) hold
negative obligations toward the global poor. We reach this conclu-
sion, however, through considerations different from and to a certain
extent opposed to those used by Pogge. The paper is structured as
follows. The first part focuses on the notion of ‘global order’ that is
crucial for Pogge’s whole argument. It attempts to give substance to
the very idea that there is something like a system of rules that gov-
ern globalisation and that this system is neither natural nor an acci-
dental result of unintended consequences. In the second part, we turn
to Pogge’s causal analysis of world poverty, in which, it will be
shown, the idea of the global order plays a crucial role. After pre-
senting four causal explanations, distinguished according to the kind
of factors taken to be relevant for the creation and persistence of
global poverty, we shall interpret Pogge’s analysis as belonging to the
Conventional view that sees all factors (local, global, or ‘glocal’) as
relevant.1 On this basis, we criticise Pogge’s thesis that minor reforms
of the global order would suffice to eradicate most world poverty (a
thesis known in the literature as the Strong Thesis), which criticism
occupies the third part of this paper. The fourth part shows that, even
if it is right to reject the Strong Thesis, Pogge’s main philosophical
point concerning the negative nature of our obligations toward the
poor remains valid, although for reasons different than those pre-
sented by Pogge himself.

1. The global order

It is by now conventional wisdom that the process of globalisation –

a process accelerated in recent times but begun at least as early as the
XVII century (Marx Engels 1848; Arrighi Silver Ahmad 2006) — has
reached an unprecedented level; more than ever before, the world is
characterised by economic interdependencies, a large amount of
goods and information exchanged worldwide, and ever on-going cre-
ations of communities of destiny and risk larger than national soci-
eties. It is perhaps less accepted, however, that a corresponding order
The Causes of World Poverty 39

of global rules, institutions, and practices capable of significantly

influencing our lives, is also in place. In the absence of a world gov-
ernment, and with significant and effective supranational institutions
existing only at the regional level (e.g., the EU), many still believe
that the very notion of ‘global order’ is almost empty. There are cer-
tainly international agreements and significant political institutions
that cover large regions of the world (EU, AU, Mercosur, OSCE,
ASEAN, NATO), embryonic forms of global governance (UN, IMF,
WB, WTO). Nonetheless, common opinion holds that the political
face of globalisation greatly lags behind its rapidly increasing eco-
nomic counterpart. The governance of globalisation still remains to
be realised.
Even if this is true, however, one can hardly deny that certain
global rules, mainly shaped by the most powerful countries, do have
an impact in the lives of millions of people worldwide. One of the
merits of World Poverty and Human Rights is precisely the identifi-
cation of features that give content to the otherwise elusive notion of
‘global order’. In particular, Pogge spells out the global rules that
contribute to the creation and persistence of poverty. Here is a non-
exhaustive list:

a) The TRIPS agreements (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual

Property Rights) that led to the creation of the WTO and the
TRIPS-plus agreements. They include provisions that allow
pharmaceutical innovators to hold and exploit a monopoly on
patented drugs for 20 years. These agreements also forbid the
production of generic pharmaceuticals that poor people could
afford to buy. Similar patents protect innovation in seeds that
could help to feed millions of poor people.
b) Tariffs on developing countries’ exports to affluent countries.
These tariffs discourage developing countries from creating
autonomous, flourishing economies by exploiting their com-
petitive advantages of cheaper labour costs and large availabil-
ity of raw materials.
c) Subsidies to affluent countries’ agriculture. Subsidising farm-
ers in the rich part of the world has the indirect consequence of
penalising farmers in the developing world, through creating a
market largely based on unfair competition. This mechanism is
similar to those under (b). It constitutes a component of a larger
protectionist scheme favouring relatively small sectors of the
population of affluent countries against the interests both of
40 Luigi Caranti

the global poor and of the average consumer (in both rich and
poor countries).
d) Arms sales. By selling arms to violent factions, multinationals
based in rich countries — not necessarily, but often, operating
against the law — help brutal elites to consolidate their power
and also increase the human and capital costs of wars in devel-
oping countries.
e) The resource privilege and the borrowing privilege. Through
the first, the developed world buys natural resources from poor
countries even when it is generally known (or easily detectable)
that the ensuing profits will enrich undemocratic elites and will
not contribute to the well-being of the population. This allows
some of the bloodiest dictators around the world to have
enough resources to stabilise and perpetrate their brutal rule
and to crush any democratic opposition that could arise from
civil society. In this category one can also include all forms of
illicit trade (e.g., the famous case of ‘blood diamonds’ recently
brought again to the attention of the global public by the trial
against the Liberian president Charles Taylor). Through the
second, the rich world (either in the form of private banks or
governmental initiative) lends money to undemocratic elites
that use it to gain more power while leaving the burden of
repayment to the population. In addition to strengthening exist-
ing dictators and making citizens of the developing world
poorer, both privileges create incentives for undemocratic fac-
tions to overthrow elected governments, thus paving the way
for the creation of new brutal regimes.
f) Illicit financial flow from developing countries. Often multi-
nationals produce and sell in developing countries but establish
their legal headquarters in ‘fiscal paradises.’ By so doing they
drain poor countries of revenues they should legitimately
receive. A report that covers the period 2002-2006 claims that
from 850 to 1000 billion US dollars per year have been illegit-
imately embezzled, and thus subtracted significant indigenous
resources from the fight against poverty (www.ffdngo.org/
documentrepository/GFI%20Report.pdf). If this figure is accu-
rate, this means that for any 1$ given in foreign aid, 10$ are
illegitimately subtracted. While rich countries often utter words
of condemnation against such practices, and some legislation
has been passed in certain countries (e.g., the UK), little is done
to counter them effectively.
The Causes of World Poverty 41

g) Race to the bottom in labour conditions directly or indirectly

led by multinationals and poorly countered by the government
of rich countries. This phenomenon became known to the
global public through the scandal of child labourers exploited
by Nike factories in Asia. It continues in various forms, as indi-
cated, for example, by the protests in October 2009 and August
2010 by Bangladeshi workers, who are fighting to be paid
more than the 43$ a month proposed by a local garment factory
that works for international brands.
h) Unrestrained pollution with greenhouse effects that both jeop-
ardise the economy of poor rural areas of the world and directly
create disasters such as the recent floods in Pakistan and China.

Clearly these features belong to the ‘global order’ in different man-

ners. It is possible, in fact, to group them in different categories
according to the degree of global reach they display. Here are few ten-
tative groups: A) features of the global order in the strict sense in that
they can be traced back to the action (or inaction) of global institu-
tions such as the World Bank, the WTO, the IMF [(a-c) and (e) inso-
far as the lending entity is a global institution, (g)]; B) features that
are better attributed to the inter-national (as opposed to the global)
order in that they depend on multilateral decisions that are short of
‘global agreement’ [(e) insofar as the lending entity is a private bank
or a national bank of a country, (d) if arms sales are permitted by
national legislation]; C) features outlawed or at least condemned by
the global or international system, or by the legislation of wealthy
countries, but not prosecuted sufficiently, often because of economic
interests [(f)]. One could also differentiate between features of the
global/international order introduced by official decisions, i.e., by
governments or their agencies, and features decided by private insti-
tutions (say, UPS accepts some illicit financial outflows from a devel-
oping country). This grouping would be helpful in considering the
distribution of responsibility for each of the features listed above.
Many believe, in fact, that tariffs on developing countries’ exports are
more objectionable than TRIPs agreements. To say that medical
research — a private enterprise to a certain extent — could be organ-
ised in a way that might better avert poverty is one thing. To say that
international trade is officially designed in a clearly unfair manner is
quite another.
All these qualifications deserve some attention, but they are in the
end of secondary importance. Although features can be more or less
42 Luigi Caranti

global and more or less official, they all depend on certain decisions
consciously made by the governments we elect. Hence Pogge’s main
point about our responsibilities prima facie remains sound. Insofar as
we, citizens of the affluent countries, through our representatives,
uphold a global order that includes these features, we contribute to
the creation and persistence of global poverty, i.e., harm the poor, and
should therefore conceive of our responsibilities toward them in
terms of negative duties. It is nonetheless important to analyse in
finer detail how, on Pogge’s account, the global order is supposed to
cause world poverty.

II. The causal mechanism generating world poverty

While Pogge emphasises the global factors listed above, he never goes
so far as to claim that they are the sole causes of world poverty. He
admits that local factors also play an important role. Less clear is
whether Pogge considers local factors to be mostly dependent on
global ones, or whether he is prepared to make room for local factors
that, uninfluenced by global ones, play some role in the creation of
poverty. Pogge often gives examples of local factors, say the corrup-
tion of local regimes, which are clearly facilitated if not fully deter-
mined by the injustice of the global order. Thus, he recognises that
local factors (such as corrupt domestic elites) are an important part of
the story. Yet Pogge insists that these are dependent variables in the
causal structure, while the independent variables, the chief causal fac-
tors, are the features of the global order that produce incentives for
coups d’état or support the persistence in power of cruel dictators.
Quite interestingly, examples of independent local factors, i.e. causes
of poverty that are not dependent on global factors, seem to be miss-
ing from his analysis. It is hard to say whether this reflects scepticism
on the very existence of such ‘purely domestic factors’ or whether this
is simply omitted because his focus is different. After all, Pogge wants
to convince us that there is a global order and that this order plays a
role that is often underestimated, if recognised at all. He may not
rehearse how important local factors are, because he thinks this is
already abundantly done by mainstream research in economics.
Since the claim that there are no purely domestic factors that gen-
erate poverty is a rather extreme form of the ‘explanatory cosmopoli-
tanism’ that Pogge explicitly rejects (Pogge 2005: 76), let’s assume
that his position is as follows. There are:
The Causes of World Poverty 43

a) purely local factors that generate poverty (dominant political

and economic culture, absence of natural resources, position in
the international economy, geographic position);
b) local factors that are mostly stimulated by the perverse influ-
ence of an unjust global regime (e.g. corruption and authori-
tarian nature of local elites);
c) purely global factors (e.g. subsidies to western agriculture,
trade barriers, TRIPs agreements).2

If this is Pogge’s view, where does it situate itself within the present
literature on world poverty? Current explanations of world poverty
can be organised according to the emphasis they place on the factors
in these three groups. Explanations that focus mainly, or even solely,
on purely local factors exemplify what is called explanatory national-
ism. Needless to say, positions in this category vary considerably
according to the local factors each theory identifies as crucial. For
example, the ‘Eurocentric’ David Landes considers climate as crucial
(Landes 1998). Others privilege political culture; to a certain extent,
Rawls’ position in The Law of Peoples can be placed in this category.3
Yet others may focus on natural resources (which can, paradoxically,
be considered both as an antidote against and as a cause of poverty,
given the famous cases of ‘Dutch diseases’).
At the other extreme we have explanatory cosmopolitanism (or
globalism) of which it is useful to distinguish two forms. Explanatory
globalism (1) considers purely global factors only (say the TRIPs
agreement) as causes of global poverty. This is the most extreme ver-
sion that resonates with theories of dependence quite popular in the
sixties and seventies. Explanatory globalism (2) focuses on a combi-
nation of purely global factors and local factors shaped by global
ones. This more moderate (and far more interesting) form does not
deny the importance of local factors, yet insists that they are trig-
gered by the global context in which they operate. Just to give an
example, abundant natural resources (a local factor) would not be a
curse for the country that owns them if the resource privilege (a global
factor) were not in place. Or, to give another example, undemocratic
elites (a local factor) would be less widespread if the global order did-
n’t enable or even facilitate these regimes, again through the resource
and borrowing privileges.
Even in this moderate form, however, explanatory globalism
excludes purely local factors — such as human capital, dominant
political and economic culture, position in the international economy,
44 Luigi Caranti

geographic position — from consideration. In other words, an

explanatory globalist must deny that there are factors that influence
world poverty that are neither directly nor indirectly traceable to the
design of the world order.
Finally, we find positions that see all of the factors listed above as
important. They vary according to the relative weight assigned to each
factor. Joshua Cohen calls this the Conventional View because he
thinks, unlike Pogge, that this stance, as opposed to explanatory
nationalism, captures the prevalent view in the social sciences, as well
as in public opinion.4 Note that the notion of ‘purely local factors’ is
crucial to distinguish the moderate form of explanatory globalism
from the Conventional View. The former, I repeat, acknowledges the
importance of local factors, but insists that these become significant
poverty-generating elements only because they are ‘activated’ by fea-
tures of the global order. By contrast, purely local factors are sup-
posed to contribute to world poverty independently of the present
global order (and perhaps independently of any global order whatso-
ever) on the Conventional View.
To see these alternative views in a chart, let’s call WP severe world
poverty, GF global factors and LF local factors. The arrow expresses
the causal relation in the basic sense that if X→Y, then X at least con-
tributes to generating Y. We have four alternatives:

(A) Explanatory Nationalism

LF→WP
(B) Explanatory Globalism (1)
GF→WP
(C) Explanatory Globalism (2)
GF→WP
GF→LF→WP
(D) Conventional View
LF→ WP
GF→LF→WP
GF→WP

This list is by no means exhaustive, because it is easy to imagine

other causal structures. Imagine for example a theory that empha-
sises how LF — say, the non-democratic nature of some regimes —
shapes part of the global order, for example, by blocking any reform
the UN attempts to pass with the goal of introducing a system of
The Causes of World Poverty 45

accountability and control for local elites. In this case, ‘bad’ LF influ-
ence the shortfalls of GF, which in turn give rise to bad incentives that
reinforce perverse local factors. This scheme would be:

[(LF→GF)→LF]→WP

By listing the four alternatives (A)-(D), we merely aim to capture

most of the theories concerning the causal structures underpinning pre-
sent literature on world poverty. The question is: where should we sit-
uate Pogge’s proposal? My impression is that most readers of World
Poverty and Human Rights (including Cohen), perhaps misled by the
rhetorical strategy adopted in that book, assumed that he sides with (C),
if not with (B). To be sure, they reason, Pogge acknowledges the impor-
tance of local factors any time he states that they are not the sole con-
tributors to world poverty or when he stigmatises nationalistic
explanations because of their incompleteness, as opposed to any inher-
ent flaws. Nonetheless, his account gives the impression that local fac-
tors, like the brutal regimes facilitated by the borrowing and the
resource privileges, are mere by-products of global factors. If Pogge
thinks so, then his view belongs in (C). I think, however, that if we read
Pogge sympathetically, he should rather be placed in (D). In other
words, he does not deny (let alone need to) that often purely local fac-
tors, uninfluenced by the global context or influenced to a negligible
degree, are causally linked to severe poverty. Such a denial, in fact,
would be highly implausible. Pogge simply puts more emphasis on the
global factors because he believes that academics and public opinion
usually overlook them. More importantly, he thinks that a reform of the
global order would be sufficient to remove most of world poverty, not
that it is necessary, i.e., there could be alternative ways to reach that
goal regarding poverty eradication. As the often cited examples of
China, Singapore, Malaysia, Botswana show, a country can achieve
spectacular results in poverty reduction under the existing global rules.5
Crucial for an evaluation of Pogge’s theory is therefore whether he can
show that a reform of the global factors is sufficient to remove most of
world poverty, an idea that Josh Cohen baptised as the Strong Thesis.

III: The Strong Thesis. Criticisms and Replies

At first sight, one is led to think that the claim is grossly exaggerated.
Given the heterogeneneity of the causal mechanism Pogge himself
46 Luigi Caranti

admits (at least on my reading), the impression is that without a more

precise view of the interplay and relative weights of the causal factors
acknowledged by (D), one is not warranted to make such a claim. One
wonders whether Pogge has ruled out the following possibility: purely
local factors are responsible for the 99% of the local poverty and the
remaining 1% is to be distributed among the purely GF and those LF
that are shaped by the (perverse) influence of the GF. If this scenario
is not ruled out by the evidence provided in WPHR, then why should
we believe that most world poverty could be reduced by a reform of
the global factors that contribute a mere 1% of the causes of poverty?
Clearly the ratio 99/1 is unlikely, but is a 80/20 ratio so unlikely that
we can neglect it? Could acting on factors that influence only 20% of
the phenomenon (by hypothesis) reduce most global poverty?
To be sure, LF and GF need not be additive contributions to world
poverty, as the ratios above suggest. The two kinds of factors could
have all sorts of interrelations. One could multiply the other or even
enable its effects on world poverty. Pogge himself alerts us to this pos-
sibility. In a reply to Allen Patten, he presents the following metaphor.
Imagine two factories pollute a river in such a way that the population
in the valley suffers some deaths. Their contributions are, however,
very different. The pollution of the upstream factory merely multi-
plies or increases the bad effect of the midstream factory, whose pol-
lution harms the population no matter what the upstream factory
does. The midstream factory (representing the local factors) therefore
harms the population independently of the upstream factory (repre-
senting the global factors) and yet the contribution of the upstream
factory increases the bad effects on the population. By contrast, if the
midstream factory didn’t pollute, the pollution of the upstream fac-
tory would cause no harm (Pogge 2005: 62-65). In this scheme, local
factors enable the perverse influence on world poverty by global fac-
tors. They do not simply add something to that effect.
If Pogge concedes that this is how LF and GF interact in generat-
ing world poverty, or even if that this could be how they interact, the
obvious question is what happens to the Strong Thesis, i.e., the belief
that, independently of how bad local factors are, there is a way for us
to stop most of world poverty by reforming the things over which we
have control, i.e., the global order.6 Continuing with the metaphor,
Pogge thinks that if we stop polluting upstream and perhaps also
release in the water some antidote to the chemicals the midstream fac-
tory releases, we will be able to prevent most of the deaths in the val-
ley. This belief is repeatedly presented in WPHR and explicitly
The Causes of World Poverty 47

defended against the scepticism of various critics. Before turning to

the discussion of this crucial objection, though, it is important to
realise that the Strong Thesis is precisely what makes Pogge’s view
innovative by contrast to generic versions of the Conventional Thesis.
Instead of saying quite generically that all kinds of factors are impor-
tant for the creation and persistence of world poverty, Pogge’s view is
special in that it stresses that we can remove most of world poverty
(independently of how weighty the purely domestic factor are) by act-
ing on global factors.
Critics blame Pogge for advancing such an ambitious thesis when
the available evidence and science do not provide a clear view of the
causal structure that generates world poverty. While they agree with
Pogge that certain features of the global order contribute in some way
to world poverty, they all think that he hasn’t proven the much stronger
claim that by reforming these features we would be able to prevent
most severe poverty. If we don’t have a clear view of the causes of an
illness, of their relative weight and interrelation, how can we be certain
or even confident that a certain remedy, that ex hypothesi acts on only
one of the causes, will remove most pathological effects?
In a not-yet-published reply to Josh Cohen, Pogge argues that there
is a way to decide whether his claim that a reform of the global order
would eradicate most world poverty is at least more plausible than its
denial. It is sufficient to determine what percentage of the world
wealth produced in the last 20 years would have been necessary to
elevate more than half of the population currently living in severe
poverty from their condition to one that fulfils article 25 of the
UDHR. Quoting Pogge:

How large is the aggregate shortfall of the world’s poor people from a
minimally adequate income that would allow them to maintain ‘a standard
of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his
family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care’ (Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25)?
The surprise here is that this shortfall is tiny — despite the unimaginable
catastrophe of a billion people chronically undernourished. The World
Bank, whose data about the poverty problem Cohen invokes, reports that
1377 million people were in 2005 living below its chosen international
poverty line (IPL) of $1.25 per person per day at 2005 purchasing power
parities (PPP) — and 30 percent below this IPL, on average. This total
shortfall amounted to 0.33 percent of the 2005 global GDP at PPP, which,
at currency exchange rates, was equivalent to about 0.17 percent of global
GDP or $76 billion or 0.28 percent of global household income. So a
48 Luigi Caranti

denial of the Strong Thesis comes to this: there is no way that global insti-
tutional design decisions during 1980–2005 could — without substantial
reductions in the incomes of the affluent — have been made in a more
poverty-avoiding way so as to effect, over this entire 25-year period, a
0.14 percent (1/700) cumulative difference to the global distribution of
household income in favour of the poor (dealing them a $38-billion
instead of a $76-billion aggregate shortfall from the Bank’s IPL). It’s not
my “strong” thesis that is daring here, I submit, but its denial.

The last part of the quotation is revealing. The idea is that the redis-
tribution necessary to avoid most global poverty is so tiny that it is
highly implausible that no alternative design of the global order
would have delivered a world with less than half the poverty we now
have. This is even less plausible if we think that in the same period
(the last 30 years) economic inequality in the world has dramatically
increased, mostly to the advantage of the already superrich top ventile
of the world population. To quote Pogge again: ‘The top ventile alone
gained, in a mere 14 years, nearly 6 percent of global household
income, about 42 times the 0.14 percent that would have been needed
to cut in half the shortfall of the global poor’.
Rephrasing this intuition with the language we introduced, the idea
is that, keeping local factors constant, at the global level the redistri-
bution necessary is so minimal that it is highly unlikely that at least
one alternative design of the global order — say, less protectionist
barriers on developing countries export, or more foreign aid to devel-
opment, or fewer perverse incentives to brutal rule, or some combi-
nation of these — would have failed to deliver the small economic
improvement necessary to rescue 688.5 million people, i.e., half of
the people now living in severe poverty.
This thought strikes me as very convincing, but it should be clear
that it does not address in the least the ‘black box’ problem about the
causes of world poverty to which we referred above and on which crit-
ics like Debra Satz and Josh Cohen insist. In other words, the fact that
so little is sufficient to raise half of the people currently suffering
from severe poverty up to a decent standard is perfectly compatible
with the possibility that the badness of the local factors is such that
any redistribution, even more generous than that considered as suffi-
cient, would fail to delivered its intended effects. To put it differently,
it could be that the weight of local factors is so high and their role so
incisive that they can be compared to a filter that spoils all good things
we do to remove local poverty. If this is the case, then the Strong The-
sis collapses. Unfortunately, we still have no precise idea about what
The Causes of World Poverty 49

the local factors can do in relation to any poverty-reducing incentive

that might come from a properly reformed global system.
Clearly, Pogge’s point that a $35 billion redistribution in favour of
the global poor in the last 30 years would have halved world poverty
need not be taken in the sense that foreign aid or some alternative
form of sheer donation from the rich to the poor would have solved the
problem. The point is best understood in the sense that an alternative
global design would have given the poor the opportunity to increase
their income through a combination of measures among which mere
receipt of foreign aid is not even the most important. The increase
could have been realised, for example, through the sale of agriculture
products, had exports from poor country not been penalised by pro-
tectionist barriers. A less perverse system of global incentives for
power competition in poor countries could have accomplished this
result as well. Nonetheless, if I am correct in placing Pogge in the (D)
category above, namely if we grant that poverty is generated (among
other things) by merely local factors, the theory does become vulner-
able to the sceptical objections, from the ‘nationalistic’ point of view,
of the sort just suggested. One can speculate that even in the perfectly
just global order the amount of poverty would not change much
because the preponderance of local factors in causing poverty (or if
you prefer their insensitivity to good incentives coming from the just
global order) is such that no global remedy for poverty will ever work
until those local factors are changed. After all, this possibility is not
merely an abstract one. Take the example of any patriarchal society
culturally hostile to any programme of education of women, birth con-
trol, or engagement of the female population in the labour market. Or
imagine a society in which there is a well-argued and sustained rejec-
tion of the rule of law in favour of a more traditional way of organis-
ing economic and political life. Is it preposterous to assume that such
a society would have large sectors of the population in dire need
regardless of the character of the global context?
My impression is that arguments of this sort will be advanced,
more or less in good faith, by those unconvinced that world poverty is
in the end ‘our responsibility’ or that ‘we can do anything about it’.
Until there is clarity on relative weights and interplay of the causes of
world poverty, whether in the form of a causal theory of poverty that
applies to the whole developing world or (more likely) in the form of
a number of different theories for each different case, I am afraid that
the sheer quantification of how little would be necessary (in absolute
and relative terms) to raise most global poor to a condition consonant
50 Luigi Caranti

with the standards set by art. 25 of the UDHR will not be sufficient to
ground the Strong Thesis.

IV. Our responsibilities unchanged

If these sceptical remarks are correct, the next question is whether

they change anything regarding our responsibilities toward the global
poor. The first impression is that they do and to a considerable extent.
If we don’t know for sure or even to a reasonable degree of certainty
what generates world poverty and at best we have a list of contribut-
ing factors whose relative weight and exact interrelation are unknown,
and if we know that we shape (through our governments) only some
of them, it still seems possible to deny that affluent citizens have neg-
ative duties toward the poor. This defensive move can take various
forms. It could be said that we need to wait until our contribution to
world poverty is determined. Since our contribution could be mini-
mal, there is no need to reinterpret our response to severe poverty as
a consideration of justice rather than charity. Or it could be said that
we have no responsibility whatsoever because, like the metaphor of
the polluting factories, our contribution to world poverty would be
made ineffective by well-functioning local factors, as shown by the
cases of developing countries that have been successful in reducing
their domestic poverty within the existing global rules.
Properly analysed, however, these defensive moves all prove to be
unconvincing. Even if we grant that our knowledge of the causal
mechanism behind world poverty is still defective, and that our con-
tribution could turn out to be either minimal or easily defused by just
domestic institutions, certain things on which we already agree are
sufficient to generate the responsibilities Pogge assigns to us. Some
features of the global system do play a role in making the conditions
of the poor worse than they could be and do influence negatively
those local factors that all nationalistic explanations of poverty
emphasise. There are global and multilateral factors on which the
powerful part of the world has direct influence. This fact — recog-
nised in any serious debate about world poverty — provides enough
grounds for justifying the obligation to remove these pernicious fac-
tors precisely because we don’t know how weighty they are. Much in
the same way in which we are not allowed to introduce a new drug
into the public market before having a clear view of all of its collat-
eral effects, so we should abstain from ‘releasing’ into the global sys-
The Causes of World Poverty 51

tem structural elements that certainly have some bad effects for the
weakest and most suffering part of humanity. Scepticism or caution
about the causal mechanism behind world poverty can, in other
words, be turned against those who appeal to it in order to avoid
recognising obligations toward the poor that are more stringent than a
generic duty of assistance.
This may not be sufficient to rescue the Strong Thesis. As a matter
of fact, it is difficult to see how this can be done before we know more
about two related, yet different topics: 1) the relative weight of the
factors that are part of the causal mechanism generating world
poverty and 2) the way in which we should go about redressing the
bad effects of global factors in the creation and persistence of world
poverty. To see why these two topics are distinct, consider that even if
the resource and borrowing privileges have stabilised brutal elites in
power, the sheer removal of those perverse incentives may not solve
the problem. The context of the generation of a problem and the con-
text of its solution need not coincide. It could be that stopping the pur-
chase of natural resources from non-democratic governments or
denying loans to brutal rulers is neither sufficient, nor necessary, nor
effective to remove them. Or it could be that they are effective to
remove them but that they are counterproductive, at least in the short
to medium period, for reducing local poverty. For all we know, a
removal of the incentives that generated distortions in the past could
make things worse in the present.
While epistemic modesty may undermine the Strong Thesis, it
leaves our responsibilities untouched. It also leaves the kind of oblig-
ation we have (negative as opposed to positive duties) unaltered. If we
contributed to cause the problem, we have a direct obligation to do
our best to solve it, even if we don’t know for sure what is the best
course of action. In particular, we have a most stringent obligation to
reform those features of the global system that still contribute to gen-
erate poverty — quite independently of how significant this contri-
bution is — and we have a most stringent obligation to compensate
for the harm we have already done. Both duties, as Pogge holds, are
negative duties and I take this claim to be of the highest importance,
even if we have to abandon the exciting, promising and optimistic
Strong Thesis. Epistemic modesty, minimal-ecumenical assumptions
about the causal mechanism of world poverty, and minimal-ecumeni-
cal considerations of justice — considerations that even libertarians
would endorse — all point to the necessity to reshape the way we con-
ceive of world poverty and to the urgency of action.
52 Luigi Caranti

LUIGI CARANTI is Associate Professor of political philosophy at the

Università di Catania (Italy). His research interests are Kant, Political
Philosophy, Human Rights, Democratic Peace Theory. Among his
recent publications are Kant and the Scandal of Philosophy (Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 2007), ‘Kant’s Theory of Human Rights’ (Jour-
nal of Human Rights, 2008), ‘Human Rights and Democracy’
(Routledge Handbook of Human Rights, forthcoming 2011).

Notes
*
I owe gratitude to the following scholars for reading early drafts of the paper:
Thomas Pogge, Ezster Kollar, Michele Bocchiola, Rachel Zuckert, Carlo Carleo.
1. By ‘glocal’ in this context we mean local factors that are activated or strength-
ened by features of the global order.
2. Notice how b) and c) could be also considered as indirect and direct poverty-
enhancing factors respectively. While a trade barrier in favour of western agri-
culture has a direct effect on poverty, the resource and borrowing privileges can
have direct and indirect effects. They have direct effects when they contribute to
increase dictator’s means of internal repression and indirect effects when they
create incentives for future coups d’état.
3. Rawls however seems to admit that at least in some cases (peoples living under
unfavourable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and
social regime) the help of affluent countries may be necessary to reach accept-
able standards of wealth. Thus, although even for these peoples the cause of
their poverty is not the global order, the cause of their failure to overcome it may
very well be.
4. J. Cohen, ‘Philosophy, Social Science, Global Poverty’, forthcoming in a volume
edited by Alison Jaggar. The paper can be read on line at http://psweb.sbs.ohio-
state.edu/intranet/poltheory/JoshCohenPTW.pdf. I agree with Cohen that this is
probably the prevailing view among scholars of world poverty, but I doubt the
public opinion and average politicians favour this thesis.
5. It would be an interesting question to explore whether the same progress reached
by the above-listed countries would have been possible for all developing countries
in the same global context. Many, including Pogge and myself, think that the mar-
ket opportunities connected with cheap manufactures has a point of saturation. In
other words, the success of the ‘cheap labour - cheap export’ way to reduce poverty
may depend on the fact that only few poor countries follow this path to growth.
6. And perhaps also the way in which each wealthy country relates to poor coun-
tries on a one-to-one basis. These two cases are not distinguished by Pogge who
seems to consider also the latter case as part of the global order, but I think this
is misleading.
The Causes of World Poverty 53

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