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Research Briefs


April 3, 2019 | Number 157

Alleviating Global Poverty

Labor Mobility, Direct Assistance, and Economic Growth

By Lant Pritchett, Harvard Kennedy School and Center for Global Development

ny citizen of the West may contemplate the Western country than they were in their home country,
the question: What could we do to alleviate so total output goes up sufficiently and potentially (with the
global poverty? “The least you can do is better right design) makes everyone better off.
than the best you can do” is the right answer. These alternatives offer two ways to help the global poor.
“The best you can do” is address “global pov- One is for rich people (in a global sense) to give a dollar and
erty” in the ways sought by philanthropists, who want to give generate roughly a dollar’s worth of benefits for the poor. The
directly to the poor. These ways include funding the types of other way is for rich people to allow those who would like to
concrete support and assistance channeled directly to indi- work at the prevailing wage of the host country to do so and
viduals, which would produce the best outcome in alleviating not to deploy active coercion to prevent them. This reflects
global poverty. This is the best you can do if you want to fund the poor person’s contribution to production and hence has
actions that directly help people in a given place. It turns out zero net cost to the host country (or it can be made to have
the best you can do to improve people’s self-assessed well- zero net cost with the right design). Of course, if a dollar were
being is, roughly, to give cash. One might have supposed that given to a poor person, it could produce vastly more human
there were investments or programs for the poor that have well-being than a dollar spent by the richer person because
superhigh economic returns, but after decades and decades the marginal utility was much higher for the poor person, but
of research, there is very little empirical support for that idea. this redistribution effect is the same for both options. This
The “least you can do” is simply to allow individuals to means that, at least in current conditions, the least you can
engage in the perfectly ordinary economic transactions of do—which is simply to increase the freedom of people who
taking a job and getting paid a wage. But for that to happen, want to work and those who want them to carry out that
countries in the West must lower their enormously high legal mutually beneficial transaction across national borders by
barriers to the mobility of low-skilled labor across national working—is better than the best you can do, which is to try
borders. Yet this is still “the least you can do” because labor to directly help people in poverty without allowing them to
mobility is win-win, according to most economists. The peo- move toward opportunities.
ple who move to the West earn higher wages than they would Many of the differences in labor productivity among coun-
in their home country because they are more productive in tries are explained by differences in total factor productivity

Editor, Jeffrey Miron, Harvard University and Cato Institute


(TFP). Transmitting TFP from country to country has prov- work in the United States—those same gains could be pro-
en to be difficult. This implies that labor with the exact same duced essentially for free by relaxing barriers to mobility.
intrinsic productivity will have much higher productivity The “best you can do” in situ is much less effective than the
(and hence justify a higher wage) in a high-TFP country than “least you can do,” which is to let people work and get paid a
in a low-TFP country. But by and large, rich countries have wage that reflects the value of their work.
passed extraordinarily strict regulations on the movement of That said, sustained rapid economic growth in develop-
unskilled labor. The price of the barriers to low-skilled labor ing countries, which is sustained by improvements in TFP,
is now 100 times greater than the price of the barriers to the can also produce enormous cumulative gains. And avoid-
movement of goods. A relaxation of these restrictions could ing growth collapses and stagnation can prevent enormous
produce the largest single gains against global poverty of any losses. Even though traditional measures of the country-to-
available policy, program, or project action. And since these country transfers of resources via foreign aid do not by them-
gains for movers are (mostly) due to higher TFP, which (at the selves appear to be responsible for producing most of the
margin) is a “public good” in the host country (because it is observed differences in economic growth, investments that
nonrival and nonexcludable), these gains are essentially free could bring about more sustained growth (which means more
to the host country. sustained accelerations and fewer sharp, extended decelera-
One thought for addressing the injustice of condition- tions) could also have high returns. There is no reason why
al birth-based discrimination that keeps people in low- more labor mobility and sustained economic growth cannot
productivity places is to imagine that the citizens of rich go together to improve well-being.
countries will carry out philanthropic activities that raise
the incomes of the global poor in situ. But because they are
in low-productivity places, it will be costly to raise their NOTE:
income in those places. For example, across five countries This research brief is based on Lant Pritchett, “Alleviating
a best-in-class antipoverty program on average produced Global Poverty: Labor Mobility, Direct Assistance, and Eco-
$344 in annual gains in income for the poor with $4,545 nomic Growth,” Center for Global Development Working Pa-
in costs. Extrapolating from this fact, it would require an per no. 479, March 2018, https://www.cgdev.org/publication/
investment of $226,000 per person to produce the annual alleviating-global-poverty-labor-mobility-direct-assistance-
gain of $17,115 created by allowing a low-skilled worker to and-economic-growth.

aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress. Copyright © 2018 Cato Institute. This work by Cato Institute is