What does poverty look like globally now? Read the opinion piece below (an extract is included and you can read the rest online) for an insight in to 'The Bottom Billion' and how systems are keeping the Least Developed Countries in poverty.

What can we as young professionals do to make a positive difference for 'The Bottom Billion'?

This is one of the things we can discuss on October 17 as part of the Stand Up events being held globally and online. See here for more information http://www.iyps.org/iyps08/regional_local_events.htm.


Trade beats aid when it comes to helping poor
By Ross Gittins, for the Sydney Morning Herald, September 15, 2007

It no longer makes much sense to think of the countries of the world as divided into rich and poor. Globalisation has created a big category in the middle.

It used to be common to picture the world's population as 1 billion rich and 5 billion poor. The 1 billion rich are people in the 30 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Today, however, it is more meaningful to think of 1 billion rich and 4 billion in countries that are rapidly developing and converging on living standards on the rich, leaving 1 billion in countries that are "falling behind and often apart".

This is the thesis of The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it, by Paul Collier. Collier's thesis is discussed at length in an article by Terry O'Brien in the Treasury's latest Economic Roundup.

See
here for the full text of the article.