Poverty

September 16, 2022

Free Enterprise Is Saving African Lives

For years, Africa has dominated the podium in the “bad healthcare” Olympics. For reference, the average cost for an established patient and Medicare recipient to make one visit to a family practice in Pennsylvania (where I live) is approximately $88—the cost of less than a week’s worth of groceries. Continue Reading...

August 05, 2022

Expanding the welfare state in Africa is a threat, not a help

While bilateral and multilateral talks are hitting impasses around much of the globe, “Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want” is a continental agreement that breaks the mold. For all its lofty ambitions, this blueprint aiming at “transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future” is paradoxically both a celebration of and a threat to the family. Continue Reading...

July 22, 2022

It’s time to reform foreign aid

When we speak of good intentions, foreign aid comes immediately to mind. It will come as no surprise to Acton readers that sound economics are not always attached to those intentions. Continue Reading...

October 13, 2021

We need a ‘Forbes 400 Poorest Americans’ list

In the 1936 film My Man Godfrey, an oddly well-spoken “forgotten man” whose temporary lodgings are a city dump, finds himself the object of a game played by a pair of rich sisters, one of whom takes a fancy to him. Continue Reading...

May 06, 2021

Efficiently combating poverty

This essay won firstplace in the essay contest of the Acton Institute’s 2020 Poverty Cure Summit, which took place on Nov. 18-19, 2020. This essay is presented as it was submitted. Continue Reading...

April 20, 2021

Derek Chauvin guilty, but riots will hurt Minneapolis for generations

In Minneapolis, members of the clergy and Congress alike spent the weeks before Derek Chauvin’s conviction on all charges pouring gasoline on the fire of rioters’ rage. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Continue Reading...

March 31, 2021

Poverty Cure Essay Contest winners, 2021

How can we effectively combat poverty? Students from across the globe answered that question and brought fresh ideas to the table in our recent essay competition, which took place as a part of the 2020 Poverty Cure Summit. Continue Reading...

March 11, 2021

Explainer: The American Rescue Plan, the child tax credit, and child poverty

On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, one day after the House of Representatives passed the $1.9 trillion stimulus by a vote of 220-211. Its supporters, especially those on the Religious Left, assert that the bill’s changes to the child tax credit represent the best way to reduce child poverty. Continue Reading...

January 28, 2021

Inequality obscures the problem of poverty

We are routinely told that rising inequality is a profoundly pernicious problem – a clear and obvious sign that the rich and well-connected continue to benefit at the expense of the poor. Continue Reading...

November 10, 2020

Ride sharing in Nepal: a story of bottom-up empowerment

Over the past decade, ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft have led a transformative wave of gig-economy disruption, allowing drivers to work independently from taxi cab companies and the unions and bureaucracies that control them. Continue Reading...

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