Should Rich Nations Help the Poor?

Featuring

David Hulme
Professor of Development Studies and Executive Director of Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

Host

Charles Kenny
Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

In the past decade, the developed world has spent almost $2 trillion on foreign aid for poorer countries. Yet 1.2 billion still live in extreme poverty and around 2.9 billion cannot meet their basic needs.

In his new book, Should Rich Nations Help the Poor?, leading poverty analyst Professor David Hulme explains why helping the world's neediest communities is both the right thing to do and the wise thing to do—if rich nations want to take care of their own citizens' future welfare.

The real question is how best to provide this help. The way forward, Hulme argues is not conventional foreign aid but trade, finance and environmental policy reform. But this must happen alongside a change in international social norms so that we all recognize the collective benefits of a poverty-free world.