The International Poverty Trap

This article summarizes to some extent the predominating Marxist and structuralist schools explanations of the international poverty trap. It also looks at more recent theoretical contributions to this topic, for instance lack of knowledge in underdeveloped countries. For several decades, rich countries tried to give some public assistance to poorer ones, to give them an initial momentum for their economic take-off, but few of these developing countries have succeeded. Although experience has shown that external aid is crucial, for different reasons most developing countries have failed to utilize efficiently foreign public assistance. Instead, some have fallen into another poverty trap—foreign debt.