Of course poverty traps exist: but they're possible to escape

Over at The Economist some musing on whether there really is a poverty trap that developing economies can get stuck in. and the answer is yes, of course there is: but also that it's potentially possible to escape such traps.

DO POVERTY traps exist? Academics seem to think so. According to Google Scholar, so far this year academics have used the phrase “poverty trap” 1,210 times. (Paul Samuelson, possibly the greatest economist of the 20th century, was mentioned a mere 766 times). Some of the most innovative work in development economics focuses on how individuals' lowly economic position may be perpetuated (geographical and psychological factors may be important).

But, says a new paper by two World Bank economists, the idea of poverty traps may be overblown. They focus on national economies and present some striking statistics. In the graph below, a country that manages to get to the left side of the line has seen real per-capita income improvement from 1960 to 2010.

So that's the empirical evidence. But there's also a basic logical point that we can make.

Three hundred years ago all countries were poor. Now some countries are not poor and some countries still are. It's thus logically certain that it is possible to escape whatever poverty traps there are. For some places have done it. It's also equally true that there must be things that prevent that economic growth from happening for some places haven't had that economic growth. Thus we can assert, without possibility of contradiction, that sure, there are poverty traps but there's nothing inevitable about them at all. It is possible to escape for some have done so.