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Out of Poverty
Book

Out of Poverty

What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (BK Currents)

Paul Polak
Berrett-Koehler, 2008

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9

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  • Innovative

Recommendation

Free-market advocate Paul Polak is an atypical poverty expert. He compellingly argues that handouts do not alleviate poverty and might make it worse. Instead, he insists, the true solution to poverty lies in unleashing the poor’s entrepreneurial power. Polak says successful entrepreneurs like him are the ones who can help the poor make more money. His company designs cheap water pumps and irrigation systems that sell for a profit while helping subsistence farmers make more money. Although he frequently repeats the same points, Polak’s treatise is a lively read. getAbstract recommends Polak’s point of view to readers who seek a contrary – and practical – perspective on the problem of global poverty.

Summary

From Subsistence to Middle Class

Millions of poor families worldwide eke out a meager subsistence by growing their own food, selling whatever crops they don’t eat and working odd jobs. Some 800 million people scrape by, earning less than a dollar a day while cultivating an acre or less. These small-plot farmers live across Africa, and in Bangladesh, Nepal, India and other developing-world locales. Such farmers often grow rice and vegetables during the rainy seasons, but they lack the knowledge and resources to raise crops during dry times, when their produce is more valuable. By investing in affordable irrigation systems, and learning how to make fertilizer from manure and human urine, subsistence farmers can dramatically increase their production and their incomes. Farmers who follow this strategy have boosted themselves from shoestring budgets to middle class, at least by the standards of their countries – where $5 a day can be considered a comfortable living.

Most poverty experts miss these common-sense solutions. They rarely visit subsistence farmers to ask what they need. As a result, rich governments flood poor countries with billions in aid, only to see the ...

About the Author

Paul Polak founded International Development Enterprises, which sells products to rural farmers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia and other poor countries. In 2007, IDE received a $13 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Polak won the Scientific American Top 50 award and an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.

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