Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'poverty'

May 15, 2014

Why Does No One Believe Extreme Poverty Has Declined?

Would you say that over the past three decades (since about the mid-1980s) the percentage of people in the world who live in extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1.25 per day — has: A) Increased B) Decreased C) remained the same The right answer is B: extreme poverty has decreased by more than half. Continue Reading...
May 12, 2014

Want To Change A Nation? Give A Girl A Book

I don’t know any terrorists, but they seem to be very fearful people. They are afraid of new ideas, other religions, air strikes, and bathing. Nicholas Kristof, of The New York Times, says that what terrorists are really afraid of are educated women. Continue Reading...
May 08, 2014

Deirdre McCloskey on Ethics and Rhetoric in the ‘Great Enrichment’

In a marvelous speech on the origins of economic freedom (and its subsequent fruits), Deirdre McCloskey aptly crystallizes the deeper implications of her work on bourgeois virtues and bourgeois dignity. For example, though many doubted that those in once-socialistic India would come to see markets favorably, eventually those attitudes changed, and with it came prosperity. Continue Reading...
April 24, 2014

Conservatives Have the Right Answers on Poverty

From the fiscal to the familial, conservatives have the right answers, says Kevin D. Williamson: The conservative hesitancy to put the issue of poverty at the center of our domestic economic agenda, rather than tax rates or middle-class jobs, is misguided — politically as well as substantively. Continue Reading...
April 18, 2014

Audio: Kishore Jayabalan on Pope Francis and Poverty

Kishore Jayablan, director of Istituto Acton in Rome, joined host Monsignor Kieran Harrington on WOR Radio in New York on Sunday morning to discuss his personal history with Pope John Paul II and to give his thoughts on Pope Francis, with particular focus on Francis’ desire to see the Catholic Church become more directly focused on the needs of the poor. Continue Reading...
April 17, 2014

Poverty Is Expensive

There are several ways to understand that poverty is expensive. First poor people pay more for the things they buy or they find that cheap stuff is not good. The poor find it hard to pay for housing which leads to having a harder time saving money even by cooking. Continue Reading...
April 11, 2014

Vatican Draws Connection Between Family Values, Economic Development

A prominent Catholic bishop recently told development experts at a UN meeting that the family is the time-tested “building block” of a charitable and economically prospering society. He said healthy, stable families allow “intergenerational solidarity” to take root in cultures, where the young gratuitously care for their elders, and vice versa, out of a fundamental Christian moral duty and capacity for human love. Continue Reading...