The world is doing a lackluster job of finding sustainable solutions to global inequality. This crisis is evident in cities like Lima, Peru, where a “wall of shame“ separates the wealthy neighborhoods from the poor shantytowns. It is disconcerting that the United Nations (U.N.) estimates that 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day, while Forbes reports that the world’s 1,810 billionaires hold a net worth of $6.48 trillion.
Solutions, Not Problems
Today many economists highlight growing middle classes in China and India as hope for the global poor and decreasing inequality. However, this is a false hope, as the U.N. and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines a middle class citizen as someone spending or earning at least $10 per day. This isn’t much money, so even if the “middle class” is technically growing, it isn’t making a big difference in balancing global inequality.
Plus, as OECD’s Director Mario Pezzini highlights, many middle-class citizens work in the unstable informal sector and lack a good education and knowledge to sustainably accumulate wealth.
To make strides in decreasing global inequality, we need to focus on bridging the disparity in education between the rich and the poor, as nearly 1 billion people today are illiterate. Inequality in global education is arguably at the forefront of global wealth inequality.
The rich have access to an elite education and use the skills that they acquire through learning to grow their income; while the poor lack access to quality education and remain marginalized without the proper tools needed to thrive. Instead, they barely survive.
At the most basic level, enhancing the education of the poor can help them find quality jobs to provide for their families. Equally important, education creates more brainpower that can work on formulating innovative ideas to solve pressing global problems. Think of the amount of untapped brilliant minds among the billions of uneducated people who could potentially find the solutions to global problems, instead of being the problem that some people wrongly think they are.
Furthermore, if someone lacks basic literacy or numeracy skills then they cannot truly access the educational or social benefits of the internet.
An educated population is extremely valuable to a country’s economic development, as studies show that a country needs at least 40 percent adult literacy to achieve sustainable economic growth. Not to mention the proven effects education has in the growth of democracy, enhancing health, and increasing farming production.
Common Mistakes
However, when implementing new education programs, we must avoid a common mistake made in past poverty solutions, which is to paint all the poor with the same brush. We must learn that not all solutions can be fully applied in all places, because each region has a unique cultural fabric, geography, history, and religion.
This means that just because a solution worked in Ghana 15 years ago, it does not mean it will work in Bolivia today. Thus, education programs must have different elements to their curriculums in each unique place in the world and include direct input from local leaders.
The first step to improving education for the poor will be to urgently address the infectious corruption in the Global South that prevents foreign aid from reaching its intended targets.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has even admitted on record that a ghastly amount of total development assistance each year, 30 percent, is lost to corruption. This means billions of dollars are stolen by the rich and not invested in the needs of the poor, such as education.
The Global City Institute in Canada predicts that by the year 2100, as a result of rising birth rates, cities such as Lagos, Kinshasa, Dar es Salaam, and Mumbai will each have over 65 million people. As the global phenomenon of urban migration continues, it appears the inequality gap will widen, unless we find solutions fast.
With a rapidly growing developing-world population, it is time to put words into action and give the poor a greater education that they can use to defeat poverty and inequality.
U.N. global education goals can guide the way, but they need to be complemented by legitimate grass roots initiatives, as we cannot count on global leaders. Plain and simple, we need to decrease the global inequality gap through enhancing quality education for the poor, so we can increase global peace.
Brad L. Brasseur is a Canadian international development specialist who has traveled to over 80 countries while working in several NGOs, including extended time on education programs in Peru and Ukraine. You can follow him on Twitter at: @brbrasseur. This article was originally published on Fair Observer.
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