With Little Notice, Globalization And Poverty By Vandana Shiva

The Effects of Globalization

New advancements in various types of technology, from information technology to transportation technology, have enabled the world to be more inter-connected than ever before in world history. With so many global interactions taking place, it can be hard to extrapolate the exact effects of this integration upon the world’s economy. Some allege that globalization has alleviated inequity while others say it has exacerbated it. Arguments can be made for either claim. In an interview titled “Globalization and Poverty”, Vandana Shiva argues that globalization aggravated wealth inequity. On the contrary, in “With Little Notice, Globalization Reduced Poverty”, Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz argue that globalization

They explain that the world is in the middle of the most rapid poverty reduction that it has ever experienced. The thirty years prior to 2005 marked a very slow and gradual decline of poverty, but as it turns out, not every country benefitted from this increased prosperity. Chandy and Geertz describe how China accounted for the majority of the decline and that if China were factored out of the result, the rate of poverty would actually increase. They concede that to some, global poverty seems perpetual, but Chandy and Gertz say that if recent estimates are correct, the period from 2005 onward experienced the most rapid reduction of poverty ever. Unlike the previous century, this wave of economic progress was not just concentrated in East Asia. Chandy and Gertz disclose that Southern Asia, Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa also benefitted from the progress. They attribute the source of economic growth to globalization. Poor countries were able to lift themselves from such grim poverty levels through insertion into the global marketplace. They assert that globalization did more in a few short years for the world’s poor than Western governments were able to do in three

Shiva focused on the effects of globalization in India and they were incredibly negative, yet India, like China, has a sizable land area, a substantial population, and natural resources. Unlike China and all of the nations that have benefitted from globalization, India lacks an effective education system. Few people in India have access to education, and even if they do, it is often inadequate. In contrast, countries that have greatly benefitted from globalization such as the United States and China, have some of the highest rates of higher education. In this way, globalization has further increased global inequality since it is the poorer nations that do not have the means to prioritize education. These less developed countries lack the skilled workers that have increased in demand thanks to globalization. Skilled workers leave less developed nations and emigrate to nations with stronger economies, “where they can deploy their skills productively” . Once again, globalization worked in favor of the already wealthier nations, leaving less wealthy nations worse off in the long term. Even wealthy nations have been affected by this. In the United States, there has been a decline in unskilled labor, which has aggravated wealth inequality within the