The great reversal

巨大的逆转

Covid-19 is undoing years of progress in curbing global poverty

新冠病毒病正在破坏多年来在遏制全球贫困方面取得的进展

The number of very poor people was steadily falling; now it is rising fast

极度贫困的人数曾一直在减少;现在它正在快速上升

May 23rd 2020 | DELHI, KAMPALA AND MEXICO CITY

JANE KABAHUMA has been eating one meal a day since the end of March, when the lockdown began. She used to work in a hotel, but it had to close, along with most businesses in Uganda. She thinks “it will take time” before the work comes back. In five months she is expecting a baby; it may arrive before a job does.

自3月底封锁开始以来，JANE KABAHUMA每天只吃一顿饭。她曾在一家酒店工作，但这家酒店和乌干达的大多数企业一样，都不得不关闭。她认为过段时间就能返工。肚子里的孩子预期五个月后生产;但照此来看或许到生孩子时都难以返工。

Her standard of living has plummeted. She used to pay to fill her jerrycans from a clean tap, but these days fetches water from a dirty well, because it is free. She gets by, more or less, with help from friends and family. But for how long?

她的生活水平直线下降。她过去常常花钱从干净的水龙头里取水，但现在却从脏兮兮的井里取水，因为这是免费的。她或多或少是在朋友和家人的帮助下度过难关的。但能持续多久呢?

词汇

Jerrycan/油罐

In normal times, people in poor countries have many ways to cope with shocks. If one member of a family falls sick, the others can work longer hours to make up for the lost income. Or they can ask cousins or neighbours for help. Or, if a whole village is impoverished by a bad harvest, they can ask a nephew working in a big city or a foreign country to send some extra cash. All these “coping mechanisms”, as development experts call them, depend on calamity not striking everywhere at once. Alas, covid-19 has done just that.

在正常时期，贫穷国家的人们有很多方法来应对冲击。如果一个家庭的一个成员生病了，其他人可以工作更长时间来弥补失去的收入。或者他们可以向表亲或邻居求助。或者，如果整个村庄因歉收而贫困，他们可以要求在大城市或外国工作的侄子寄一些额外的现金。所有这些发展专家所称的“应对机制”，都依赖于灾难不会同时袭击所有地方。唉，新冠病毒却办到了。

词汇

Impoverish/使贫穷；使枯竭

Calamity/灾难；不幸事件

In many places, workers cannot make up for lost income by working harder because demand for their labour has collapsed. Empty restaurants need no waiters; shuttered malls need no mopping; and few motorists are rolling down their windows to buy fruit from street hawkers.

在许多地方，工人们无法通过更努力地工作来弥补失去的收入，因为对他们劳动力的需求已经崩溃。空餐馆不需要服务员;关门的商场不需要拖地;很少有驾车者会摇下车窗从街头小贩那里买水果。

 

The newly impoverished cannot easily get help from friends or relatives because, no matter where in the world they are, they are all experiencing a simultaneous and massive economic shock. The World Bank predicts that remittances from migrant workers will drop by 20% this year. Male Nepali migrants who are still overseas are now sending back only a quarter of what they were in January. Many send back nothing at all, having returned home.

新贫困的人很难从朋友或亲戚那里得到帮助，因为无论他们在世界的哪个地方，他们都在同时经历着巨大的经济冲击。世界银行预测今年移民工人的汇款将下降20%。仍然在海外的尼泊尔男性移民现在只打款了一月份的四分之一。甚至许多人空手而归。

词汇

Remittance/汇款

 

Most countries in the developing world still require their citizens to stay at home, except to duck out for essentials. But few of the world’s poorest can work from home. And without work, many cannot eat. Thus, covid-19 imperils one of the greatest achievements of recent decades—the stunning reduction in global poverty.

大多数发展中 国家仍然要求他们的公民呆在家里，除非因一些迫不得已的事项而推辞。但是世界上最穷的人很少能在家工作。没有工作，许多人就无法吃饭。因此，新冠病毒危及了近几十年来最伟大的成就之一——大量减少全球贫困人口。

词汇

duck out/逃避; 推托

 

From 1990 until last year the number of extremely poor people—those who subsist on less than $1.90 per day—fell from 2bn, or 36% of the world’s population, to around 630m, or just 8%. Now, for the first time since 1998, that number is rising—very fast. The big questions are: how many millions will slip back into penury? And will they quickly escape again when the pandemic is past, or will its effects be long-lasting, or even permanent?

从1990年到去年，每天生活费不足1.9美元的极度贫困人口的数量从占世界人口36%的20亿下降到约6.3亿，仅占世界人口的8%。现在，自1998年以来，这个数字首次上升——而且非常快。最大的问题是:有多少人会重新陷入贫困?当大流行过去后，他们能否快速再次脱贫，还是此次疫情影响将是持久的，甚至是永久性的?

词汇

slip back/逆流；倒退

penury/贫困；贫穷

The answers to those questions are maddeningly hard to pin down. The World Bank estimates that national lockdowns and the global economic collapse will push at least 49m people into extreme poverty, eliminating nearly all the gains made since 2017. That seems implausibly rosy—the bank’s estimate was based on data published in April. More recent numbers are far gloomier. For example, on May 17th Goldman Sachs estimated that India’s economy is shrinking at an annualised rate of 45%. Andy Sumner of King’s College London estimates that if global income per head falls by 20%, which it may for several months at least, the number of extremely poor people could increase by 420m—as much as the entire population of South America. That would wipe out a decade of gains in the fight against poverty.

这些问题的答案难以确定。世界银行(World Bank)估计，国家封锁和全球经济崩溃将使至少4900万人陷入极端贫困，几乎抵消了自2017年以来取得的所有成就。这似乎让人很难乐观看待——世界银行的估计是基于4月份公布的数据。最近的数据更加令人沮丧。例如，5月17日，高盛集团估计印度经济正以45%的年化速度萎缩。伦敦大学国王学院的Andy Sumner估计，如果全球人均收入下降20%，极贫人口的数量可能会增加4.2亿——相当于整个南美洲的人口数量。这将抹去十年来与贫困作斗争的成果。

词汇

Maddeningly/使人恼火地；令人发狂地

Implausibly/难以置信地

Rosy/美好的，乐观的

 

Many poor countries have copied the kind of lockdowns that have been imposed in rich countries. But the circumstances are utterly different. The well-off are much more likely to have jobs that can be done from home. And workers in rich countries who cannot do their jobs, such as hotel receptionists or waiters, are typically wellsupported by taxpayers.

许多贫穷国家复制了富裕国家实行的封锁措施。但情况完全不同。富裕的人更有可能从事在家就能完成的工作。而在富裕国家，那些不能做好本职工作的工人，比如酒店接待员或服务员，通常会得到纳税人的大力支持。

By contrast, when India imposed a strict and dramatic lockdown on March 24th, the 140m people who are estimated to have lost their jobs were suddenly in big trouble. Tens of millions of migrants who had moved from villages to cities suddenly had no income, no way to pay the rent and no trains to take them home, since those were also cancelled. Millions trudged hundreds of kilometres back to their home villages, where their families at least would take them in. The lockdown has been extended to May 31st, with only small adjustments.

相比之下，当印度在3月24日实施严格而又突然的封锁时，预估会失业的1.4亿人口突然陷入了巨大的困境。数以千万计的从农村来到城市的农民工突然之间没有了收入，没有办法支付房租，也没有火车送他们回家，因为这些火车也被取消了。数百万人跋涉数百公里回到他们的家乡，他们的家人至少会收留他们。封锁已经延长到5月31日，但只做了一些小的调整。

词汇

Dramatic/突然的

Similar tales of woe are coming from other poor places. Over 80% of Kenyans and Senegalese reported a loss of income in early April. In a study for the University of Manchester, 60 Bangladeshi families have been writing “money diaries”. Before March, about $1,000 a month passed through each household (not all of it income). In April that fell to $300 or so.

其他贫困地区也有类似的悲惨故事。超过80%的肯尼亚人和塞内加尔人在4月初报告了收入损失。在曼彻斯特大学的一项研究中，60个孟加拉家庭写了“金钱日记”。在3月份之前，每个家庭每月大约有1000美元的收入(并非其全部收入)。今年4月，收入降为300美元左右。

 

In middle-income countries, too, lockdowns have been excruciating. Colombia’s was so tough that it sparked protests in working-class barrios. In Altavista, a neighbourhood near San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, people have taken to hanging white flags from their windows to show that they have run out of food.

在中等收入国家，封锁也很痛苦。哥伦比亚的政策是如此强硬，以至于引发了工人阶级的抗议。在萨尔瓦多首都圣萨尔瓦多附近的Altavista社区，人们开始在窗户上悬挂白旗，表示他们已经没有食物了。

 

“Almost overnight people go from having income to having no income,” says Carolina Sánchez-Páramo of the World Bank. Less income often means less food. The World Food Programme (WFP) predicts a doubling of acute hunger by the end of 2020. David Beasely, its boss, worries that the world could see “multiple famines of biblical proportions” within a few months.

世界银行的Carolina Sánchez-Páramo说:“几乎一夜之间，人们就从有收入变成没有收入。”收入减少往往意味着食物减少。世界粮食计划署(WFP)预测，到2020年底，严重饥饿人口将翻一番。其总裁David Beasely担心在几个月内世界可能会发生“圣经意义上的多次饥荒”。

词汇

Famine/饥荒

Biblical/圣经的；依据圣经的

 

Health-care systems have been disrupted not only by the virus itself but also by lockdowns, which make it harder for people to seek treatment for other illnesses. A team at Johns Hopkins University calculates that across 118 poor and middle-income countries, disruption to health systems and hunger could kill 1.2m more children and 57,000 mothers over six months. The Stop TB Partnership, an international research group, reckons that in India alone interruptions of diagnosis and treatment from a three-month lockdown, followed by a 10-month recovery period, could cause 500,000 excess deaths from tuberculosis.

卫生保健系统不仅受到病毒本身的破坏，还受到封锁的破坏，这使得人们更难寻求其他疾病的治疗。约翰霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins University)的一个研究小组计算出，在118个贫穷和中等收入国家，卫生系统的中断和饥饿可能在6个月内导致120多万名儿童和5.7万名母亲死亡。国际研究组织遏制结核病伙伴关系(Stop TB Partnership)估计，仅在印度，由于3个月的封锁和10个月的恢复期导致的诊断和治疗中断，就可能导致50万人死于结核病。

词汇

TB/肺结核（tuberculosis）

Diagnosis/诊断

Some kinds of lockdown could cost more lives than they save. A report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimates that if restrictions prevent vaccinations, in Africa 140 will die for every covid-19 death prevented.

某些类型的封锁所造成的生命损失可能会超过它们所挽救的生命。伦敦卫生和热带医学学院(London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)的一份报告估计，如果限制措施阻止了疫苗接种，在非洲，每阻止一例新冠病毒患者死亡，就会有140人死亡。

 

Even moderate lockdowns can be harmful in very poor countries. The Malawian National Planning Commission and two think-tanks did a cost-benefit analysis of continuing Malawi’s restrictions, which include closing schools, curbing travel and stopping health outreach work. They estimated that the lockdown, if maintained for nine months, would avert 12,000 deaths from covid-19. However, it would also cause more people to go hungry, making them vulnerable to TB and malaria, so the net number of deaths avoided would be roughly half that. And because the victims of coronavirus would be largely old people, whereas the victims of malaria would often be infants, the lockdown would actually cause a net loss of 26,000 years of life.

在非常贫穷的国家，即使是适度的封锁也可能是有害的。马拉维国家计划委员会和两个智库对马拉维继续实行的限制进行了成本效益分析，这些限制包括关闭学校、限制旅行和停止卫生外展工作。他们估计，如果封锁持续9个月，将避免1.2万人死于新冠病毒。然而，它也会导致更多的人挨饿，使他们易受结核病和疟疾的侵害，因此避免的净死亡人数将大约是这个数字的一半。由于冠状病毒的受害者大部分是老年人，而疟疾的受害者通常是婴儿，封锁实际上会导致26,000年的净寿命损失。

 

The lockdown would also leave Malawi $12bn worse off, by stopping people from working and interrupting children’s education, thus dooming them to earn less in the future. That is equivalent to nearly two years’ GDP—an astounding sum. Overall, they estimated that the costs of the lockdown outweighed the benefits by 25 to 1.

封锁还会让马拉维损失120亿美元，因为这会让人们停止工作，中断孩子们的教育，从而让他们将来挣得更少。这相当于近两年的GDP——一个惊人的数字。总的来说，他们估计封锁的成本与收益之比为25比1。

 

Such calculations are subject to a wide margin of error. Nonetheless, they explain why many experts think that rich-country style lockdowns are unsustainable in many poor countries.

这种计算有很大的误差。尽管如此，它们解释了为什么许多专家认为富国的封锁在许多穷国是不可持续的。