The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

What does Sachs mean by the ladder of economic development? Is this metaphor helpful to understanding what is needed to end poverty? Why or why not?

Why does Sachs believe that foreign aid is important to a country’s attempt to jumpstart economic development? Draw from at least three examples in the book to illustrate your argument.

What is the “poverty trap”? Using two examples from the book and one hypothetical/fictional country, illustrate how the poverty trap prevents economic growth.

Does Sachs believe that the transitions to a market economy were successful in Poland and Russia? How were the outcomes similar or different, and why? How was Sachs’s advice to the countries similar or different, and why?

What is Sachs’s concept of “differential diagnosis”? What does this concept mean for assisting countries?

Sachs writes of “clinical economics,” a concept that reflects his borrowing from medicine. He also describes himself as a doctor making house calls. What type of “illness” did he treat, and do you think his “prescription” was helpful to his goals and the countries that called him? Can these concepts be applied universally or only in certain contexts? Why?

In Chapter 3 Sachs uses a household as a simplified example to illustrate pathways to economic growth and reasons for persistent poverty. Explain how the household examples fit with three situations in which economic growth or persistent poverty are evident over time, using examples from the book or elsewhere. In so doing, show how the pathways work, or why they fail, using the ideas in Sachs’s simplified examples to explain developments in complex situations.

Explain the relevance of Enlightenment ideals to Sachs’s vision of how we might end extreme poverty within 20 years. Address whether the vision Sachs lays out constitutes a continued implementation of those ideals, breaks from them in some meaningful way, or represents the evolution of Enlightenment thought for the present day.