Tarja Halonen

Focus on Poverty: Education isn’t a magic bullet

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Everyone from Time magazine to SciDev.Net seems to be talking about inequality at the moment. [1] Thomas Piketty’s book about it is a best seller. [2] Recently, Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has also tackled the subject. [3]

Another Nobel laureate, Eric Maskin addressed the issue through a theoretical model recently, as SciDev.Net reported. His analysis augmentseconomists’ theory of international trade by focusing on international production as central to understanding today’s global economy. With the globalisation of production, moderately skilled workers in emerging economies get new employment opportunities and unskilled workers do not. Maskin’s remedy for this is education and training.

The theory is elegant but I am cautious about pinning down one solution, particularly on such a huge and controversial issue as inequality.

Education is certainly part of the answer. But half the world’s working population (around 1.5 billion people) are in subsistence agriculture or the informal sector — they are unlikely to get into skilled jobs anytime soon, even with increased education.

It’s also worth saying that education isn’t just about reducing inequality.Earlier this week (8 September), I attended a presentation in Finland on the latest Human Development Report (HDR) by Eva Jespersen, deputy director of the New York HDR Office. Stiglitz, in the report, points to the wider importance of education: “not just because it enables individuals to live up to their potential, not just because it leads to increases in productivity: it also enhances the ability of individuals to cope with shocks”. [4]

Last week (5–6 September), I joined some 350 development economists at a UN conference looking at the current evidence and new thinking on how to achieve economic equality. [5]

“My recipe for reducing inequality is economic growth, social provision (including education) and redistribution.”

Roger Williamson

There were some interesting insights. For example, International Monetary Fund analyst Andrew Berg questioned whether the assumed trade-off between growth and inequality is such an established fact. He also showed that more equal societies do seem to be able to sustain growth for longer. [6]

Research presented at the meeting from UNU-WIDER (the UN University’sWorld Institute for Development Economics Research) shows that income inequality is falling in Latin America due to economic growth and redistributive social policies by governments over the last 15 years, eroding long-established patterns of extreme inequality. [7]

Top and tail at the conference were Marcelo Côrtes Neri, Brazilian minister for strategic affairs, and former Finnish president, Tarja Halonen. There was a surprising overlap in the insights from politicians from countriesthat are 79th and 24th in the Human Development Index respectively. Neri reported that extreme poverty (defined as living on less than US$1.25 a day at 2005 prices) in Brazil has decreased by 69 per cent from 2002-12, with half of the impact due to growth and half to redistributive policies. [8]

Both Neri and Halonen stressed the importance of employment and active policies for education, equality and social inclusion. Brazil (starting over the last 20 or so years) and Finland (for much longer) both realised thatpoverty should not be used as an excuse to avoid starting social programmes for the poor (including those for education) and policiesaimed at greater equality and social inclusion. So my recipe for reducing inequality is economic growth, social provision (including education) and redistribution.

Roger Williamson is an independent consultant and visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Previous positions include organising nearly 80 international policy conferences for the UK Foreign Office and being head of policy and campaigns at Christian Aid.

 

References

[1] Joseph Blasi The wealthy and powerful discover inequality (Time, 20 August 2014)
[2] Thomas Piketty Capital in the twenty-first century (Harvard University Press, April 2014)
[3] TEDx The costs of inequality: Joseph Stiglitz at TEDxColumbiaSIPA(YouTube, video published 11 March 2013)
[4] Human development report 2014 (UN Development Programme, 2014)
[5] Inequality — measurement, trends, impacts and policies (UNU-WIDER, accessed 10 September 2014)
[6] Jonathan D. Ostry and others Redistribution, inequality and growth(IMF, February 2014)
[7] Falling inequality in Latin America: Policy changes and lessons (UNU-WIDER, June 2014)
[8] Marcelo Neri Inequality in Brazil: Measurement, trends, impacts and policies (presentation slides, accessed 12 September 2014)

globalisation of unhealthy lifestyles.

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Sauli Ninistö, President of Finland, opened the conference stressing that health is important for achieving other goals, but also has value in its own right. He spoke of Finland’s huge improvements in health since the 1940s achieved through investing the fruits of economic development in social and health infrastructure.

Congratulations to Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, for her powerful opening speech saying corporate interests on health pose a daunting challenge for health. She noted health is shaped by the “globalisation of unhealthy lifestyles,” leading to an epidemic of NCDs which is blowing out health budgets—e.g. diabetes consumes 15% of health budgets. Previously, progress has meant diseases vanished, whereas now NCDs are flourishing along with urbanisation and economic growth.

Chan said public health has been used to fighting Big Tobacco, but now also have to fight “Big Alcohol,” “Big Food,” and “Big Soda.”  She cast industry involvement in policy making as dangerous and leading to distortions. She pointed to the many tactics industry uses to water down public health measures. These include: civil society “front groups;” promising that self-regulation will be effective; industry funded research, which confuses the evidence; positioning government action to promote health as curbs on individual liberty. Her speech defined the problem well. Solutions are needed now!

On the opening panel, Alireza Marandi talked of Iran’s success in designing an effective primary healthcare system, which included reform of medical education. The Secretary of the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Jaana Husu-Kallio, called for the “borders between professions” to be demolished in the interests of health and noted the need for a whole of government approach to food policy covering food security, production, safety, and nutrition. Tarja Halonen, former President of Finland, said education and health are “the tools of wellbeing.” There was much discussion about how the lessons from the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control can be applied to other areas and agreement that legal instruments should be more widely used to protect public health.

The afternoon’s panel on political will for Health in All Polocies (HiAP) disappointingly has gave few clues about how to create the will. The best suggestion was from Abdellatif Mekki, minister of health of Tunisia, who suggested that ministers of health should be vice presidents to give them more power, which they can then use against, for example, trade ministers who promote unhealthy industries like sugar.

I ended the day in a session on agriculture policy, food, and health. Bibi Giyose, from the African Union, reminded us that women make up more than 75% of food producers in Africa.  Priorities for nutritional sensitive agriculture are female empowerment, ensuring product diversity, and that processing sees food retaining its nutritional value. Yet we heard that global food chains dominate, rather than local food for local consumption, and that free trade agreements encourage unhealthy food supply. Fast food and supermarkets have increased massively. How do we change our food supply away from ultra processed food? Eating it seems to be killing people around the world!

Source: BMJ