Development theory and poverty

Poverty is the human condition that for centuries has deprived the large majority of world population of the freedom to build up a decent life. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, still 84 per cent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. ¹ The Industrial Revolution – the structural change vividly described in the works of Karl Marx and in masterpieces of the English literature – provided with an income previously unemployed males who had moved to metropolitan areas. Yet, in European regions involved in the industrial take-off, deprived people – for instance those under the social protection of parishes in the countryside – were eradicated from their social environment. Fast-growing urbanization caused life conditions of the poor to worsen. ² During the nineteenth century, institutions of impersonal charity dedicated to the relief of the poor were established in many European industrialized towns. Instead, in the rest of the known world the level of impersonal charity remained very low until the twentieth century. ³ An extreme case of absence of any kind of safety net was wife-selling, the survival strategy of many Chinese destitute husbands which lasted till Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949.