1. What is a poverty trap? Write an essay that discusses the different types of poverty traps that are found both internationally and domestically.
Give examples of each kind of trap, where highest points will be awarded for examples that have not been discussed extensively in class. Choose one of these poverty traps and suggest what might be an effective poverty intervention related to that trap.
A poverty trap describes an inherent condition of poor countries that hinders their ability to grow out of poverty.
There are two main poverty traps. The first one is due to a delay in technological advancement in poor countries due to patent and intellectual property laws.
More advanced economies keep a head start over poor economies in terms of developing more technologically advanced, productive and profitable industries and, consequently, the technological gap between advanced vs. poor only widens. The second poverty trap is related to population growth.
Poorer countries have generally demonstrated higher demographic increase (influence of traditional home care) which cripples wealth distribution, i.e. even if poorer countries grow their markets, the growth in population limits the benefits of wealth increase per capita.
Regarding the technological poverty trap, one effective intervention can be lifting up regulations that limit knowledge sharing and technological transfer so that the technological gap closes up. In this pandemic, we are witnessing the damages of technological gaps in terms of vaccine distribution as poor countries lag behind.
Grading Rubric for the Essays:
1. Originality (20 pts): Your essay should contain original thoughts and/or use of some outside material that distinguish your ideas from others in the class. Essays only repeating lecture material will not earn high grades. Those earning high grades will move beyond material in the lectures, reflecting independent learning and creativity.
2. Analysis (15 pts): The goal for each essay should be to show a mastery of the topic it addresses, where concepts are clearly and accurately presented, graphs are done correctly and labeled well, etc.
4. Writing Quality (15 pts): You essay should display a nice academic style in use of language, absence of grammatical mistakes, paragraph organization, freedom from sentence construction and spelling errors, and a nice flow.
