A Japanese Example and Contemporary Studies
Galbraith’s arguments are still applicable for developing countries in which mass poverty exists. For him, the most important factor for underdeveloped economies to escape mass poverty is a change of mind in people to believe in the possibility of bettering their living conditions.
If people have a wish to better their own living conditions, they can find the capital and techniques necessary for the economic development.It may be of interest here to mention the example of a farmer reformer called Kinjiro Ninomiya, who succeeded in restoring several hundred villages that had fallen into poverty in the Tohoku (North-East of Tokyo) regions in Japan towards the end of the Edo period just before the Meiji Revolution in 1868. He is very famous among the Japanese people as a person symbolizing diligence and parsimony, but he is more important as a reformer engaged in relieving the poverty of rural areas at that time. Ninomiya, in his restoration work of villages fallen into poverty, first made a meticulous inquiry into the state of the villages for about the previous ten years, examining each house’s conditions, and then he proposed a detailed plan of restoration work to the feudal lords who asked him to do the restoration work. At the same time he demanded and persuaded the feudal lords to reduce the unfeasible official tax rates imposed on farmers to make room for saving and investment by the people. He concentrated his efforts on changing the minds of villagers accustomed to poverty as the destination given by Heaven (see Tomita 1912).
Among contemporary economists, Theodore William Schultz studied poverty in developing countries (The Economics of Being Poor, 1993). He pointed out that too much importance had been attached to endowments of natural resources, to land in particular. In his view, the most important thing in economic development is the quality of labour. He emphasized the importance of human capital for economic development, for which the people needed to be educated. A.K. Sen also examined poverty in developing countries. He studied famine and starvation as the core of poverty. For Sen, mere economic development is not sufficient to prevent famines and starvation: to achieve that, he contended that freedom of the people and democracy were essential (Sen 1981).
Katsuyoshi Watarai