Aiding The Poor With Knowledge

The rapid growth in global knowledge is raising the prospect that poor countries may fall further behind wealthy ones, the World Bank said in a new report.

The report warned that developing countries are pursuing "a moving target" as rich, industrial nations "constantly push the knowledge frontier outward."

However, the report released Sunday also said that millions of the world's poor may climb out of poverty because plummeting communications costs make the transfer of knowledge cheaper than ever.

To keep pace, the report said, developing countries "need not reinvent the wheel or the computer or treatment for malaria. Rather than re-create existing knowledge, poorer countries have the option of acquiring and adapting knowledge already available in richer countries."

The report, "Knowledge for Development," is the 21st in the bank's annual series. It concludes that rapid access to financial, technical and medical knowledge is crucial to improving the health and living standards of the poor.

"This year's report is about using the world's knowledge to help the poor become healthier and more prosperous," said Joseph Stiglitz, the bank's chief economist. "Knowledge is one area where government policies can make a difference when resources are scarce."

He pointed to Costa Rica, where life expectancy and infant mortality equal many industrial countries even though the Central American country has one-tenth the income of the United States.

"This is partly due to government efforts to provide information on health and sanitation with emphasis on (disease) prevention," Stiglitz said.

He said many of the estimated 2 million children around the world who die from diarrhea could be saved if their parents knew how to prepare a simple solution of water, sugar and salt.

"Knowledge can make the difference between sickness and health, between poverty and wealth," said Carl Dahlman, main author of the report. "Governments that adopt policies to make the most of knowledge will have major advantage in improving the lives of their citizens."

The report focuses on two types of knowledge that are critical for developing countries:

How-to knowledge, such as nutrition, birth control, engineering and accounting.

Knowledge about characteristics, such as product standards, accounting systems or creditworthiness of a company, which it labels "information problems" that can affect markets.

The report argues that closing these knowledge gaps for example, through education, better phone systems and openness to exchanges with countries including trade can do much to help the world's poor improve their lives.

One of the bank's major objectives, highlighted in the report, is the bank's drive to become a clearing house for all the development knowledge acquired in 54 years of existence.

By 2000, the bank hope to have its knowledge management system online so that clients, partners and member governments around the world can tap into the bank's know-how.

Written by Harry Dunphy