Globalization Generates Poverty

What can two dollars buy you? A small coffee at Starbucks, a candy bar, bag of chips, and a soda, a slice of pizza. For nearly three billion people, approximately half of the world's population, two dollars a day is all the money that the person has to live on. Moreover, of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion grow up in poverty; 640 million without adequate shelter, 400 millions with no access to safe water, and 270 million with no access to health services (UNICEF 2005). One proposed reason for this harsh reality of high poverty rates is globalization - the growing integration of economies and societies around the world. The claim that globalization generates poverty has been the focus of many debates for the last twenty years, including the debate between Carlos Caretto, Gillian Crowl, Steve Grossman, and Annie Wong on February 21, 2005. Caretto and Crowl argued that poverty is an indirect result of globalization as is evident by high unemployment rates, wage inequality, and diminishing health