经济学人下载:富国、穷国和弱国

The group matters for several reasons. Although its members may be semi-prosperous when measured by income per person, they contain a large and rising share of very poor people. Geoffrey Gertz and Laurence Chandy of the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC, think-tank, calculate* that MIFF countries account for roughly 180m of the world’s neediest people (those living on less than $1 a day). That is 17% of the total number of the world’s poorest—more than the 10% who live in poor but stable countries. Anybody concerned with alleviating world poverty must reckon with the MIFFs.

这样一些国家的存在有几个理由：尽管按照每个国民的收入来衡量的话，他们的收入处于中等水平，但是这些国家有大量处于赤贫状况的人。华盛顿某智囊团Geoffrey Gertz和Laurence Chandy of the Brookings组织估计MIFFs国家的赤贫国民约有1.8亿，占全球总数的17%——比那些岁穷但稳定的国家的赤贫人群（约10%）还要多。任何有意解决全球贫困问题的人都不得不考虑MIFFs。

The category has also grown fast. Failed states were once poor almost by definition. The World Bank’s fund for helping fragile states is called the Low-Income Country Under Stress fund; once countries stop being low-income, they no longer qualify as “under stress”, even if they are. In 2005, MIFF countries contained fewer than 15m people living on less than $1 a day, not even 1% of the world’s poorest. Since then, the group has expanded mostly because once-poor states have grown richer, but no more functional. It is rarer to find a middle-income state in which law and order once existed but later failed.

区分国家类别的标准也变化得很快。几乎是按照定义来得出来的结论：这些衰败的国家曾经都很穷困。世界银行针对政权不稳的国家的援助基金就叫做“困难低收入国家”援助基金。一旦该国家收入水平不再低，那他们就不属于“困难”国家，尽管他们依旧很困难。2005年MIFFs国家有少于1.5亿人日均消费水平低于1美元——跟全球赤贫人群相比，这个消费低于他们的1%。从那以后，这类国家数量增大的最大原因是那些曾经贫困的国家都脱贫了，但政权依旧不稳。而那些法律法规曾经比较完善的中等收入国家，后来法律法规却不再适用的，却很少见。

And that points to one broad lesson from the emergence of this new group. Indigent places are often racked by chaos; but somewhat better-off ones are not necessarily more stable. This year’s World Development Report (WDR) showed that violence plays a greater role than once thought in keeping countries poor. Yet countries do escape poverty, and do not always grow more peaceable in the process.

然而这样一些国家的存在也表明一个更大的问题：贫困的国家经常遭遇骚乱，但并不意味着经济状况稍好的国家就会更稳定。今年的《全球发展报道》（WRD）表明在使国家陷入贫穷方面暴力的危害比想象中大。在这个过程中，国家确实脱贫了，但并不总是更趋稳定。

As a background paper to the WDR shows, almost 70% of wars and conflicts took place in the poorest quarter of countries in the 1960s; little more than 10% then took place in the next quarter up, the lower-middle income countries. In the 2000s, however, that changed. The share of conflicts in the poorest group fell below 40%; the share in the lower-middle group rose to over 40%. Strife is getting more common in lower-middle income countries, and weak government is at least as big a predictor of violence as poverty itself.

就如一份向WDR提交的背景文件所表明的，1960年几乎70%的战争和骚乱发生在国家最贫困的区域；然而在1970年只有略高于10%骚乱发生于中低收入水平的国家。然而进入千禧年后，情况改变了。在最贫困的国家，骚乱的发生率降到低于40%，而在中低收入国家该比率超过40%。在后者，骚乱的发生越来越常见。而脆弱的政府跟贫穷至少起着同样大的作用。