Esther Duflo’s presentation at Ted revolves around the destitute in those less developed countries. Her suggestions to eradicate poverty are improved by a series of social experiments, which are more persuasive and powerful. From her standpoint, the common’s health and education basically and significantly determine the future of these less developed countries. In other words, for these developing countries, in case they want to thoroughly defeat poverty, they should guarantee the population in good health and provide the citizens with compulsory education to some extent.
Her proposal can be exactly proved by the most economic growth model—Solow-Swan Model. Solow-Swan Model positions to labor and capital accumulation as the vital factors to increase productivity. Moreover, the quality of the population improved by achieving universal education can be viewed as technological progress commonly. These three factors deeply influence the long-term national economic growth.
Initially, Esther’s concentration on immunization and malaria can be deemed as the approach to ensuring the growth of the population. Secondly, her endeavor to universal education can be viewed as technological progress—an exogenous variable. Hence, it is obvious that Esther’s proposal to eradicate poverty coincides with Solow-Swan Model.
According to Solow-Swan Model, capital accumulation as another significant variable is not mentioned in this presentation at TED. Besides the growth of labor and technological progress, capital accumulation is also deemed as the key to eradicate poverty. Therefore, IMF, World Bank even some developed and developing countries all provide some preferential loans and bailouts to those less developed countries to help them to gain enough capital in the relatively long term, which means the capital accumulation increases. Furthermore, in order to benefit the export sector in these countries, some countries or regional organizations provide the most-favored-nation treatment.
In fact, according to those endogenous growth models, for instance, the AK endogenous growth model, the universal education ensuring the quality of population possesses a more vital position in the long-term economic growth. In a word, according to Esther’s presentation proved by Solow-Swan Model, the common’s health and education are crucial to defeating poverty.
