Book Critique : “The Bottom Billion” by Paul Collier

Outline

1. Introduction

Thesis statement: Poverty is only the problem of a group of countries that form “The Bottom Billion”, so we only need to focus on this group. The aim of this book is to find solutions that could help reduce the poverty in these countries.

2. Body Paragraphs

• The traps: Conflict trap, natural resources trap, landlocked with bad neighbors and bad governance in a small country.
• Globalization and the bottom billion
• The instruments: aid, military intervention, laws and charters, trade policy
• Response to the book

3. Conclusion

In his book “The bottom billion: why the poorest countries are falling and what can be done about it”, global economist Paul Collier discusses what he thinks are the causes of poverty and suggests some solutions to reduce it. He focuses on a group of people that he calls “the bottom billion”. This book reveals: the traps that the bottom billion countries are facing, the effect of globalization on them and the instruments that can be used to rescue them. Poverty is only the problem of the 58 countries (980 million) that constitute the bottom billion. These countries are trapped at the bottom, where there has been no economic progress for the last 40 years. Collier argues that being trapped at the bottom aggravates the income gap between the bottom billion which is immobile and the rest of the world which is growing; so we only need to focus on this group. This book’s purpose is to find poverty-reducing solutions that would lift these countries from the bottom.

Home

Collier starts off by giving us a picture of the bottom billion. The countries that are part of it live within the 21^st century, however, their facts of existence coincide with the 14^th century: they are filled with “civil war, plague and ignorance” (3). He also makes it clear that the bottom billion consists of not just African countries but also Bolivia, Cambodia, Haiti, Myanmar, Laos, North Korea and Yemen. Collier never mentions the very poor people of any developing countries. He only focuses on the entirely poor countries. He says that the current definition of development is “outdated” (3). He also tries to convince the reader to stop using the expression “third world” to describe undeveloped countries because most of them reside in countries that are actually developing (30). By saying this, Collier is basically disregarding the five billion poor people and pouring his entire attention on what he calls the bottom billion. Following the definition of the bottom billion, Collier discusses the four traps that prevent these countries from escaping the bottom. The first one is the conflict trap. More than half (73%) of the bottom billion countries have a history of being in a civil war or are currently in one (17). According to his research, Collier says that once a country has gone through a civil war, it is more likely for it to go through another one. A lot of countries were in a civil war at some point in time like the United States (19^th century) and Britain (17^th century). These examples are a proof that wars are not always traps. The US and Britain wars never happened again, but for countries with low-income, the possibility of war to evolve into a trap are much more high (17-18). Moderate development (poverty) and low salaries (hopelessness) can make a country subject to civil war. And civil war makes a country collapse and dive into poverty (because of its costs).