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Less is more for the poor

To the jeers of liberals who claim they are merely insensitive to the poor, conservatives have argued for years that simply throwing money at the economically disadvantaged is foolish. More thought needs to be put into assistance that really helps people lift themselves out of poverty, it has been urged.

To anyone paying attention to “anti-poverty” programs at home and foreign aid distributed abroad by the United States, that has been obvious for decades.

But now, it is official, in a way. This week, Princeton University researcher Angus Deaton was awarded the Nobel prize in economics, perhaps the highest honor for those in his field.

Much of Deaton’s career has been spent in learning the facts about people in poverty. He set some of his findings out in a 2013 book, “The Great Escape.”

Deaton pointed out that in many countries where enormous amounts are spent to aid the poor, poverty rates have remained unchanged or grown worse. Yet in places such as China and India, where relatively little is spent, prosperity is shared by larger segments of the populations.

Deaton is not popular among the handout crowd. But if the goal is to help the poor – not just claim to be doing so – his ideas deserve more study.

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