Humanitarians and others tend to use phrases like “poverty reduction” and “poverty alleviation” to explain and describe the plight of the world’s poorest. But some are suggesting this might be unhelpful, even harmful.
In a recent letter to the International Herald Tribune entitled Semantics of poverty, Michael Maltese, head of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship in Massachusetts, USA, argues that the focus should rather be on the promotion of entrepreneurs in developing countries.
“It may be that the semantics of poverty alleviation itself - which speaks far more to the problem than the solution - is a key to what hinders our efforts to ameliorate global inequality,” he says.
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