Is Globalisation Good for the Poor? A Reply to Pogge

Abstract

In an article from 2011, Thomas Pogge asks if globalisation is good for the world's poor. Pogge answers in the negative. As important evidence for the view that the globalisation period has not been good for the world's poor, Pogge cites a dataset provided by Branko Milanović (CUNY). In this article, we do not take issue with Pogge's definition of “globalisation”, “the world’s poor” or with the veracity of the empirical data he refers to in articulating and defending his view about globalisation and the world's poor. However, Pogge's reference to a dataset showing that there has been an economic polarisation between the wealthiest and poorest people of the world, is not, we contend, something that in itself offers strong support for his view that the global institutional order is a significant cause of this economic polarisation. We believe that Pogge overemphasises the impact of supranational institutions in relation to the question of what the main drivers have been of the economic polarisation in question. Our thesis is that a high population growth in the poorest regions of the world, relative to the population growth in the richest regions of the world, can help explain a non-negligible amount of the economic polarisation that has occurred between 1988 and 2005.

ORCiD

Jorn Sonderholm http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7554-7487

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers from Global Society for very helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the Authors

Jorn Sonderholm is an associate professor in the Department of Learning and Philosophy at Aalborg University in Denmark. His current research interests are in political theory and global justice. He has published papers in journals such as Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy Compass and Bioethics. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of St Andrews.

Henrik Lydholm has an MA in applied philosophy from Aalborg University. He currently works as a project manager in the public sector.

Notes

1 T. Pogge, "Are We Violating the Human Rights of the World's Poor?" Yale Human Rights and Development Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2011), p. 22. Pogge's article won the American Philosophical Association's 2013 Gregory Kavka Prize in political philosophy. This is something that makes discussion of the article pertinent. Pogge defines “globalisation” as a “dense and influential global system of rules along with a proliferating set of new international, supranational, and multinational actors” (p. 19). The globalisation period, according to Pogge, runs from 1988 to 2005 (p. 22).

2 Pogge, "Are We Violating the Human Rights", op. cit., p. 20. Pogge defines “we” as citizens of developed countries (e.g. the United States, the European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) (ibid., p. 2).

3 Pogge, “Are We Violating the Human Rights”, op. cit., p. 20. In virtue of resisting this view, the empirical theorists in question can, according to Pogge, be seen as defending the status quo of the current supranational institutional arrangement.

4 Pogge, “Are We Violating the Human Rights”, op. cit., p. 22. Pogge says that Milanović's published work contains information similar to the information Pogge uses to underpin his view about what consequences the globalisation period has had for the world's poor (ibid., p. 2). According to Pogge, this published information can be found in, e.g., B. Milanović, The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality (New York: Basic Books, 2011).

5 Pogge, “Are We Violating the Human Rights”, op. cit., p. 22.

6 Ibid., p. 23.

7 Ibid., p. 24.

8 T. Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008). It is important to note that in arguing for this view, Pogge utilises a subjunctive baseline for harm. So Pogge does not reject that the situation for the global poor has improved somewhat in the globalisation period. The global institutional order is, however, still causing harm to the global poor because the situation of the global poor would have been significantly better if an alternative global institutional order had been in place in the globalisation period.

9 In fact, we very much agree with Pogge's view that those World Trade Organization (WTO) rules that allow individual countries to hand out huge subsidies to their own domestic producers and impose an import tax on foreign goods are both morally unfair and seriously detrimental to the economic well-being of many of the global poor. T. Pogge, “Responses to the Critics”, in A. Jaggar (ed.), Thomas Pogge and His Critics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), p. 183.

10 It should be noted that Pogge, in a recent article, has responded to some of the criticism that his original article has prompted. See T. Pogge, “Are We Violating the Human Rights of the World's Poor: Responses to Four Critics”, Yale Human Rights and Development Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2014), pp. 74–87. In this “response to critics” article, Pogge does not, however, address the type of criticism that we advance in this article.

11 In our article, we have divided GHI into three groups. The dataset Pogge uses divides GHI into six groups (Pogge, Are We Violating the Human Rights, op. cit., p. 22). Our division of GHI maps onto Pogge's division in the following manner. The rich group in our article corresponds to the “Richest 5%” in Pogge's article. The poor group (in world A) in our article corresponds to the “Poorest quarter” (in 1988) in Pogge's article, and the middle income group in our article corresponds to the four groups in between the top and bottom groups in Pogge's article. Each individual in this group thereby owns an average of 8.57% of GHI. The individual distribution of assets among members of this group is of no importance. It is, however, important that any member of the first group is richer than any member of the middle income group.

12 As with the first group, the distribution of wealth between the 70 persons in this group is of no importance. However, it is assumed that everyone in this group is wealthier than any person in the third group. On average, the 70 persons in this group own 0.799% of GHI.

13 This is on the assumption that the GDP of B is identical to that of A. This assumption is by no means empirically unrealistic. Consider, for example, that in the euro area, from 1995 to 2000, GDP decreased by 13.75% while the population increased by 1.33%. In sub-Saharan Africa, GDP decreased by 22.6% from 1981 to 1985. In the same period, the population increased by 12.03%. See World Bank, “World Development Indicators”, available: <http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators> (accessed 30 March 2016). As a matter of empirical fact, it is correct that populations and economic output tend to grow in tandem. See C. Berry, “The Relationship between Economic Growth and Population Growth”, SPERI British Political Economy Brief, No. 7 (September 2014). From this, it does not, however, follow that a growing population always, or nearly always, leads to a growing economic output (an increased GDP).

14 Notice how these numbers resemble the numbers in the bottom row of the dataset referred to by Pogge.

15 The assumptions made in our model, about where on the global income ladder population growth occurs and what the overall magnitude is of global population growth, are not, however, totally implausible if one looks at how the world is. Consider, for example, the following summary comments made by the United Nations (UN) Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in United Nations, World Population Prospects the 2015 Revision: Key Findings and Advance Tables (New York: United Nations [Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division], 2015): “Continued population growth until 2050 is almost inevitable, even if the decline of fertility accelerates. There is an 80 per cent probability that the population of [sic] world will be between 8.4 and 8.6 billion in 2030, between 9.4 and 10 billion in 2050 and between 10 and 12.5 billion in 2100″ (p. 8). “More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. Africa has the highest rate of population growth among major areas, growing at a pace of 2.55 per cent annually in 2010–2015 (figure 3). Consequently, of the additional 2.4 billion people projected to be added to the global population between 2015 and 2050, 1.3 billion will be added in Africa. Asia is projected to be the second largest contributor to future global population growth, adding 0.9 billion people between 2015 and 2050, followed by Northern America, Latin America and the Caribbean and Oceania, which are projected to have much smaller increments. In the medium variant, Europe is projected to have a smaller population in 2050 than in 2015” (p. 3). “The 48 least developed countries (LDCs) as a whole still have high total fertility (4.3 children per woman in 2010–2015) and fast growing populations, at 2.4 per cent per year. Although this rate of increase is expected to slow significantly over the next decades, the population of the LDCs, 954 million in 2015, is projected to increase 39 per cent between 2015 and 2030, and to double to 1.9 billion persons by mid-century” (p. 8). “Africa continues to experience very high rates of population growth. Between 2015 and 2050, the populations of 28 African countries are projected to more than double. By 2100, ten African countries are projected to increase by at least five-fold: Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia” (p. 9). In addition to these statements, the report offers information about which 10 countries had the highest fertility rate between 2010 and 2015 (average number of children per woman). This is the list: Niger, 7.63; Somalia, 6.61; Mali, 6.35; Chad, 6.31; Angola, 6.20; Democratic Republic of the Congo, 6.15; Burundi, 6.08; Uganda, 5.91; Timor-Leste, 5.91; and Gambia, 5.78 (p. 43).

16 World Bank, op. cit.; and United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, Key Findings and Advance Tables (New York: United Nations [Department of Economic and Social Affairs], 2013).

17 See World Bank, op. cit. We acknowledge some difficulty in comparing our data directly with Pogge's data. Firstly, we do not know who the “poorest quarter” refers to in Pogge's data (for more on this issue, please see footnote 27). Secondly, Pogge uses Global Household Income as a base of comparison, whereas we use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (current US$). Thirdly, Pogge's data yield information about how the world's income is distributed (e.g., the richest x% of the world controls y% of GHI). From this information, no information is entailed about which region of the world individuals from the richest x% come from. We look at a world region's percentage share of global GDP and divide this number by the number of individuals in that region at a given year. This method yields the individual percentage share of global GDP for each individual in the relevant region in the relevant year. Importantly, this method does not distinguish between individuals within a region. Each individual, in a given region, ends up having an identical individual percentage share of global GDP. However, we do not view these difficulties as being problematic for the plausibility of our critique of Pogge.

18 Compare the size of this increase (12.9%) with the size of the increase that sub-Saharan Africa would have needed in order for it to be the case that each individual in sub-Saharan Africa had the same share of global GDP in 2005 as she had in 1988 (57.79%).

19 Respectively 30.69% and 34.75%.

20 We do not suggest that the poorest quarter of the world's population is comprised of individuals from only these two regions. Our suggestion is merely that most of the individuals who constitute the poorest quarter of humanity live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. There is good empirical evidence for this view. See World Bank, op. cit. This suggestion is compatible with it being the case that, e.g., some members of the richest 5% come from these two regions and that some individuals from outside these two regions are members of the poorest quarter of humanity.

21 The dataset in question is the one mentioned in the introduction.

22 It should be acknowledged that Pogge, in his article, makes reference to a second dataset that gives information about the number of undernourished persons in the world (Pogge, "Are We Violating the Human Rights", op. cit., p. 23). We interpret Pogge to be of the opinion that such a dataset constitutes an absolute measure of global poverty. The dataset about undernourished persons does not contain data exactly for the globalisation period (1988–2005) but contains data for the 1990–1992 period and for the 2005–2007 period. In the former period, there were 843 million undernourished persons in the world. This number of people constituted 16% of the global population. In the latter period, there were 848 million undernourished people. This number of people constituted 13% of the global population. This means that in the 1990–2007 period (a period closely overlapping the globalisation period), the number of undernourished persons, as a percentage of the world population, decreased. The number of undernourished persons increased, however, by 0.59%. In this article, we leave a detailed discussion and interpretation of this second dataset to one side.

23 For recent discussions on the role of domestic and global drivers of poverty, see, e.g., J. Cohen, "Philosophy, Social Science, Global Poverty", in Jaggar, op. cit., pp. 18–45; J. Sonderholm, "Thomas Pogge on Global Justice and World Poverty: A Review Essay", Analytic Philosophy, Vol. 53, No. 4 (2012), pp. 366–391; Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, op. cit.

24 See Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, op. cit. Pogge, "Are We Violating the Human Rights", op. cit., p. 20.

25 In a very recent interview with the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP), Pogge gave the following answer to the question of what the main causes are of the persistence of contemporary poverty: “There are many different causes for the persistence of poverty but one set of causes that is often overlooked is the international institutional architecture that has emerged in the years since the end of the cold war”. “Visualising Poverty Research—Interview with Prof. Thomas Pogge (USA)", directed by CROP, the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty, 2015. available: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pcgw0MC2fE> (accessed July 4, 2016).

26 Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from generation to generation. The fertility rate is one of the factors that influence a country's population growth rate. Other factors include the death rate and the volume of people migrating to and from the country. On average, the replacement level fertility rate is around 2.1 in developed countries. This value includes two children to replace the two parents and an additional 0.1 for the risk of a child dying before reaching reproductive age. For developing countries, this number is slightly higher, at around 2.6, with an additional 0.6 due to the higher risk of infant mortality. See “Population Characteristics of Highly Developed & Developing Countries”, available: <http://study.com/academy/lesson/population-characteristics-of-highly-developed-developing-countries.html> (accessed 28 March 2016). For average fertility rates for a number of developing countries in the 2005–2010 period, see the UN data in footnote 15. Niger's was 7.63. Research has not been able to show that rapid population growth causes poverty, but across all developing countries, over time, a strong inverse relationship between fertility and per capita income, and fertility and life expectancy is observed. There is also a clear connection between high fertility and poverty and the formation of a trap in which low incomes may exacerbate high fertility rates and vice versa. See Center for Global Development, “Demographics and Poverty”, available: <http://www.cgdev.org/page/demographics-and-poverty> (accessed 28 March 2016).

27 We are, however, of the opinion that this premise is, in the end, false. Justifying this opinion is the topic of a separate paper, but for an overview of some considerations and arguments that can be amassed in support of it, see M. Risse, "Do We Owe the Global Poor Assistance or Rectification?" Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2005), pp. 9–18; M. Reitberger, "Poverty, Negative Duties and the Global Institutional Order", Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2008), 379–402.

28 In South Asia, the fertility rate decreased from 4.35 to 2.95 in the period from 1988 to 2005. This is equivalent to a 32.17% decrease. In sub-Saharan Africa, the fertility rate decreased from 6.48 to 5.52 in the period from 1988 to 2005. This is equivalent to a 14.87% decrease. See World Bank, op. cit.