Working hard, but working poor, in developing countries

THE last 25 years of economic growth in the developing countries have produced a spectacular reduction in the percentage of the world's people living in extreme poverty. Fifty-two per cent of people in developing countries were in extreme poverty at the start of the 1980s; the rate has fallen to 22 per cent today. In China alone, rapid economic growth resulted in a drop in poverty of 500 million people.

Despite this welcome progress, much more needs to be done. Many people in the Western world assume that solving the problem of poverty in the developing world primarily requires the creation of more jobs. That is not the case - or at least not the main issue. The developing world has plenty of jobs. The world's working poor need …