Description:
This book chronicles five decades of an economist's antipoverty work and challenges today's students of sustainable development to establish a new standard for improving the lives of the rural poor in the twenty-first century.
Author M. Riad El-Ghonemy begins with his early childhood in an impoverished village in the Nile Delta of Egypt, sharing lessons learned from his personal and professional experiences and identifying the driving forces that shaped his career in the field of development economics.
In illuminating the roots of rural poverty, Dr. El-Ghonemy identifies several analytical concerns that have arisen from his work. For example, are property and economic freedom sacrosanct, or should they be regulated by the state to maximize social welfare?
His life's work has shown that an unchecked market economy is not the answer and that one solution does not fit all. Rather, the challenge for professionals is to address economic underdevelopment on a case-by-case basis, ensuring the participation of those whose lives are being affected in the process.