"Is the language of rights useful for reducing poverty?"

Limit: 825 words 

"Is the language of rights useful for reducing poverty?" forthcoming, Dec. 2023,
in Making a Movement: The History and Future of Human Rights
(Carr Center for Human Rights, HKS: Cambridge MA), pp. 55-56.

Jeffrey Frankel
 

I do not work on human rights.  But I have views.  My view is that the language of human rights is not useful for achieving reductions in global poverty.  I imagine that only an economist would say such a thing, though I do not speak for all economists.[i]

There are four ways that I think I hear people use the word “rights.”

(1) First: “I know that group X has a right to Y, because I was told by God.” Discussion with such a person is probably not useful.

(2) There has been an agreement that people have a particular right. I consider this second definition to be the best one.  If people think they have been denied the right, they can appeal to some institution.  [The right necessarily have to be legally codified, or necessarily even written down, although that is desirable.]  Examples.]

(3) “I propose that Y be made a right.”  It is useful to make a distinction between a right that has been agreed and a proposal that this should be done. But I won’t be pedantic about this.

(4) “I think goal Y is really really important.”  This is often what people really mean. I can’t emphasize strongly enough that I think reducing poverty around the world is the single most important economic objective of our time. It should be top priority.  But that doesn’t mean that calling elimination of poverty a right is useful.  It is an imprecise use of language, to begin with.  Worse, I don’t even think it is expedient.  It could even be counter-productive.

Consider now four cases to illustrate the distinction between how important something is and whether it is appropriate to use the language of rights. 

1. Something that is really important and where the language of rights is appropriate.  Example: Freedom from torture.
2. Something that is important, but where calling it a right doesn’t really fit.  Example: Freedom from auto accidents.  [It is just not productive to say that the public has the right to zero accidents.]
3. Something that is not important, but where the language of rights is appropriate.  In the game of Monopoly., if you pass “Go”, you are entitled to $200.  If another player violates this right, you can point to the rules on the box and appeal to the other players.
4. Something that is not important, and where the language of rights is not relevant.  I would like to win a Monopoly game.  But winning isn’t a right.

What is the harm in saying everyone has the right to be free of poverty?   Why do I think it can actually be counter-productive?  First, it sends the wrong signals as to the most important causes of poverty and how to address them.  As a result, we could end up with more poverty rather than less.

            Three examples.  In the 1960s, Third World countries talked about a New International Economic Order.  They wanted reparations for colonialism.  [There was no chance this was going to happen.]  It diverted the countries’ attention away from what they needed to do to improve their standard of living: macroeconomic stability, rule of law, and the other practices that we teach about here at the Kennedy School. 

Next, in 1990, Germany reunified. At the time, productivity in East Germany was only 1/3 or ¼ of what it was in the West. But the German government adopted the principle that Easterners were entitled to the same standard of living as Westerners.  Specifically, Chancellor Helmut Kohl decided that East German marks were to be converted into West German marks at an unrealistic parity of one-for-one, and then pushed for East German workers to get the same wages as West German workers.  As an implication, with East German workers 1/3 as productive as their counterparts, Unit Labor Costs started out 3 times higher in the New Lander, discouraging private investment there.  In the view of many economists, this slowed economic growth in the East and may help explain why, 30 years after unification, productivity in every eastern state remains lower than productivity in every western state (75 %, on average)[ii] and why unemployment remains consistently higher.[iii]

A final example.  In India in 2005, a new law guaranteed every rural household 100 days of employment each year.  Economists have judged that this program is an inefficient way of shifting income to the poor.[iv]

The second way that applying rights language too broadly can be harmful is by undermining the credibility of other important rights agreements.  The third way is that enshrining a war on poverty in a UN agreement will not add to its political support in western countries, but rather will reduce it, at least in the US.

[i] The original basis for this note was a debate with Amartya Sen, noted winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

[ii]  www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Dossier/neue-laender.html#

[iii]  “East Germany has narrowed economic gap with West Germany since fall of communism, but still lags,” John Gramlich, Nov. 6, 2019, Pew Research Center.

[iv] The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has been criticized by Jagdish Bhagwati ,Arvind Panagariya, and Surjit Bhalla..