In the early 20th century, the world managed to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty, yet the income inequality problem continued to grow and even became the source of tension between regions. In this interview, Tony Atkinson, a professor at the London School of Economics, talks about facing up to one of the defining problems of our time in his book Inequality: What Can Be Done? Atkinson studied poverty and inequality over four decades. He believes that inequality can only be solved through a concerted global effort and offers his views on how China, as a relatively opaque country, can work with global forces to alleviate poverty.
Can Bottom of The Pyramid Initiatives Alleviate Poverty in LatAm?
Several Latin American countries suffer from acute income inequalities and extreme poverty. For governments, that poses a tricky question: how to lift hordes of people out of poverty? The Latin American experience shows that well-meaning government initiatives often don’t trickle down all the way to the poorest segments of society. Felipe Perez, professor at INCAE Business School, feels that the best way out of this is to rely on Bottom of the Pyramid initiatives that are seeded by the local population at the grassroots. If this were to happen, people who are part of the problem can also be part of the solution.
Agricultural Productivity: Fields of Dreams?
As agricultural productivity grows, rural life continues to evolve. Factories, skyscrapers, airports–picture modernity and chances are you’ll think first of an urban landscape, or an industrial wasteland. As for the rural world, everyone knows that’s what modernity ruins: as Henry David Thoreau noted in his journal in 1852, “This winter they are cutting down our […]
Bottom of the Pyramid and Beyond: The Thinker Interview with Stuart Hart
In the year 2002, C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart published a groundbreaking article in Strategy+Business magazine that introduced to the world the idea of the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The idea, which says that the poor present a vast untapped business opportunity, and if companies serve the poor, they can help eradicate poverty and […]
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