文章导读
本文选自《经济学人》10月19日文章。今年诺贝尔经济学奖授予阿比吉特·巴纳吉(Abhijit Banerjee)、埃丝特·迪弗洛(Esther Duflo)和迈克尔·克雷默(Michael Kremer),表彰他们“在减轻全球贫困方面的实验性做法”,他们的工作帮助人们理解贫困的本质。贫困的根源是资源分配不均,这是在任何时代、任何社会都必然存在的现象,而消灭贫困,绝对不是让老百姓吃饱穿暖那么简单,它涉及温饱、教育、医疗、社会保障等方方面面。他们解释了穷人到底是为什么成为穷人、无法脱贫、且代代相传的问题。穷人面临的真正问题不是吃不饱饭那么简单,而是没有办法获得全面的营养;在健康方面,疾病预防工作即使再便宜,穷人也还是不会去做,因为他们只关心生病以后要花多少钱来治;第三,穷人家的孩子不上学不是因为没钱,而是不愿意上学;最后,穷人一般都没有社会保险、退休金、养老金,对他们而言,孩子是养老送终的唯一希望。所以,他们会越穷越生,恶性循环。
由于篇幅较长,本文节选原文标题和全文重点段落进行精讲,文末有获取原文全文阅读链接方式。
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选文精讲
A Nobel economics prize goes to pioneers in understanding poverty诺贝尔经济学奖授予理解贫困的先驱者Randomised trials help policymakers grasp which policies work and which don’t随机试验有助于决策者了解哪些政策有效,哪些无效
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Oct 17th 2019
THE MOST important question in economics is also the hardest: why do some countries stay poor while others grow rich? In 2015, 10% of the world’s population lived on less than $1.90 per day, down from 36% in 1990. But more than 700m people remain in extreme poverty, and the number grows every day in certain parts of the world, in particular sub-Saharan Africa. For their contributions to understanding gaps in development, the better to close them, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have been awarded this year’s Nobel prize for economics. All three are Americans, though Mr Banerjee and Ms Duflo are immigrants (and married to each other). Ms Duflo is only the second woman to have received the prize and, at 46, the youngest winner ever.经济学中最重要的问题也是最难回答的:为什么一些国家贫穷,而一些国家却变富了?2015年,全球10%的人口每日生活费不足1.9美元,这一比例低于1990年的36%。但仍有7亿多人处于极端贫困之中,在世界的一些地区,这个数字每天都在增长,尤其是撒哈拉以南的非洲地区。阿比吉特?班纳吉、埃丝特?迪弗洛和迈克尔?克雷默因在理解发展差距、更好地消除发展差距方面做出的贡献,荣获今年的诺贝尔经济学奖。这三个人都是美国人,不过班纳吉先生和迪弗洛女士是移民(并且他们是夫妻)。今年46岁的迪弗洛女士是第二位获得该奖项的女性,也是有史以来最年轻的获奖者。
Thirty years ago, economists mostly looked at the big picture. They studied large-scale structural transformations: from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial. Macroeconomists built growth theories around variables such as human capital, then ran cross-country growth regressions to try to measure relationships—for example, between years of schooling and GDP per person. But data were scarce or poor, and the vast number of potentially relevant factors made it hard to be sure what caused what.cross-country growth regression: 跨国增长回归,意思是以一国人均实际产出为被解释变量,根据一定的理论,引入一系列解释变量作为回归变量,进而建立回归方程。30年前,经济学家大多着眼于大局。他们研究了大规模的结构转型:从农村和农业到城市和工业。宏观经济学家围绕人力资本等变量建立增长理论,然后进行跨国增长回归,试图衡量(他们之间的)关系——例如,受教育年限与人均GDP之间的关系。但是数据很少或者很差,大量潜在的相关因素使得很难确定是什么导致了什么。
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