Is economic growth the magic wand for ending poverty? — Charles Kenny

In Pursuit of Development

Charles Kenny is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC. He was previously at the World Bank, where his assignments included coordinating work on governance and anticorruption in infrastructure and natural resources, and managing investment and technical assistance projects covering telecommunications and the Internet. Charles has written several books, two of which we discussed in this conversation: Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding, and Our World, Better: Global Progress and What You Can Do About It. We also discussed a recent report, where Charles and his coauthor Zack Gehan created a set of scenarios for the shape of the global economy in 2050. While their forecast for richer countries is not very optimistic, what they found is largely positive for developing and middle-income nations. For example, the report finds that incomes per capita on the African continent could be 76% higher in 2050 than they were a few years ago, and in India incomes could jump 136%. Twitter: @charlesjkenny

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:46
• Global development viewed from Washington - 02:52
• Reducing extreme poverty by 2050 - 07:15
• Economic growth, poverty and “degrowth” - 15:40
• What should the World Bank be doing more of? - 28:25
• The global public goods agenda - 39:00
• OECD DAC aid has lost its credibility - 43:30
• Combating pessimism and short-term thinking – 50:18

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

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https://globaldevpod.substack.com/

https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/

Host

Dan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)

Apple Spotify YouTube

Subscribe:

https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com

https://globaldevpod.substack.com/