SECTION A
Essay
125 marks
Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere.
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The phrase echoes the ILO's Declaration of Philadelphia (1944), which says poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere. The examiner wants an essay on how poverty in one region spills over through conflict, migration, disease, crime and lost markets, making poverty reduction a shared interest.
ThesisIn an interconnected world, poverty is not a local misfortune but a shared risk, so fighting it everywhere is both a moral duty and enlightened self-interest.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Security: poverty and joblessness feed conflict, extremism and piracy that cross borders
- 2Migration: desperate economic migration creates humanitarian crises and political tensions in richer countries
- 3Health: diseases spread from areas with weak health systems to the rest of the world
- 4Economy: poor populations mean smaller markets and weaker global demand
- 5Within India: lagging regions and urban slums affect national growth, stability and social harmony
Counter-view
- Some argue rich countries can insulate themselves with walls, tariffs and border controls. The essay should show that such barriers are costly and fail to stop the spillovers of deprivation
Open and close
- Open: Open with a fishing village on the Somali coast where young men, with no catch and no state, turned to piracy that soon raised shipping costs across the world
- Close: Close by arguing that global prosperity will remain fragile until it rests on a floor below which no one is allowed to fall
Where marks usually go
- Writing only about Indian poverty schemes and ignoring the global spillover idea
- Treating 'threat' only as crime and terror, ignoring health, migration and markets
- Moralising without showing the mechanisms by which poverty affects the prosperous
Examples that fit
- HistoryThe ILO's Declaration of Philadelphia in 1944 stated that poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere, as the world rebuilt after war.International Labour Organization, Declaration of Philadelphia (1944)
- HistoryThe Marshall Plan from 1948 funded European recovery partly because the United States saw that poverty could breed instability and extremism.US National Archives, Marshall Plan (1948)
- CasePiracy off the coast of Somalia in the late 2000s, rooted in state collapse and poverty, disrupted global shipping and prompted international naval patrols.UN Security Council Resolution 1816 (2008)
- CurrentSustainable Development Goal 1 commits all countries to end extreme poverty everywhere by 2030, a global acknowledgement of shared stakes.United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals (2015)