Alleviating poverty through profit.

• Author: Teutsch, Betsy
• Position: Dollars & Sense

WHAT DO WE mean by poverty alleviation? In fact, how do we measure poverty? All agree that hundreds of millions of people are moving up out of extreme poverty. However, hundreds of millions more still live with great deprivation. Some argue that the poor always will be with us. In relative terms, that is hue: there always will be those at the bottom of any economic distribution, but those who live with the fewest resources can make progress improving and stabilizing their lives when given access to affordable solutions.

Affluent people, far removed from those who live on one or two dollars a day, tend to glaze over at numbers like "2,600,000,000 people lack sanitation" or "3,000,000,000 people cook directly over smoky campfires." These are numbing numbers; they make people feel guilty and helpless. In actuality, anyone can do something to help people help themselves. However modest the effort, it makes a difference to someone.

I want to highlight low-cost, high-impact tools and practices that generally save time and expense, helping eliminate poverty traps --circumstances that perpetuate poverty. At the simplest level, I see the goal not as poverty alleviation per se, but working toward eliminating human suffering from preventable illness and hunger; stabilizing precarious existence, helping people access decent living conditions, sanitation, food security, and education; expanding opportunity, giving hardworking people paths to improve their circumstances and derive better returns on their hard work; and combating the abuse and exploitation of the world's poor, including violence against women and other forms of unjust treatment of impoverished people.

New approaches to humanitarian technology, designed for the planet's poorest, emphasize co-creation. People are not defined only by their material poverty; they possess many assets and deep knowledge about how to accomplish tasks. There are tools that help accomplish tasks more quickly and effectively, making use of improved, affordable designs and practices. Cynthia Koenig's Wello Water Wheel transports water in half the time with less physical strain, a beautiful illustration of British journalist Matt Ridley's observation in The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves: "In one sense this is the story of humanity, creating time. Human progress has been about innovating in ways that save time so that there is more time for something else. Prosperity is time saved."

Excited as it is to discuss elegant problem-solvers like microinsurance or rainwater baskets, it is important to acknowledge that systemic discrimination blocks women's progress out of poverty. Women are powerful agents of development. Investing in low-income girls and women is...