If you ask a development economist to pick one metric which best encapsulates
the poverty problem worldwide, there’s a good chance you’ll end up looking at
the number of people living on less than $1 a day. Kash
Mansori today reminds us that number has been dropping substantially: from
almost 1.25 billion people in 1990 to under a billion in 2004. With the continued
torrid economic growth of China, it’s surely lower still today.
Kash says that "there’s nothing that we do in economics that is more important".
But in saying so he simply assumes that economists are in some way
responsible for the improvement in this number. If you ask me, the improvement
is not due to economics but politics – specifically, Chinese politics.
Look at the same number ex China, and I think you’ll have a harder time persuading
me that any amount of economics has made the world a less poverty-afflicted
place.
Remember that China has, historically, always been the largest economy in the
world. As it grows back from the historical aberration of Mao to its more customary
geopolitical position, China will do wonders for global poverty reduction simply
by dint of its sheer enormity. But I don’t think you can thank economists for
that.