Anti-Poverty Policies and Anti-Poor Philosophies

Abstract

Many other authors have documented the harmful effects of the SAP’s
on global poverty and inequality. Even World Bank experts have admitted
that these policies have failed to achieve the desired effects. Accordingly, the
SAP’s were replaced by PRSP’s – Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. The
name strongly suggests that these papers would be more poor friendly.
Closer examination reveals old wine in new bottles – policies known to
worsen poverty continue to be pushed as effective anti-poverty measures.
The reasons why PRSP’s will not make any impact on poverty is detailed in
the report by Cheru (2001) cited earlier. This is an often repeated historical
pattern, where anti-poor policies have been deceptively justified on fallacious
grounds. For those who are genuinely interested in helping the poor, it is
useful to outline some of the arguments used to justify crushing the poor, and
the historical contexts in which these ideas emerged.