Introduction

This chapter discusses the different types of private and public ethics that bear on global development. It presents up-to-date statistics about global poverty and inequality and briefly surveys efforts since the end of WWII to address poverty by development agencies and the UN. The chapter also addresses different theories about the causes of poverty as well as controversies surrounding the meaning of development. Most important, it asks the question: Why should anyone feel duty-bound to relieve global poverty? Assuming that we should feel duty-bound to relieve global poverty, the introduction asks whether current efforts at achieving this goal go far enough in fulfilling this duty. The chapter concludes with a chapter-by-chapter summary of the book that follows.