If development is to be judged by the ability of less-developed countries to catch up with the most advanced, and thus reduce poverty, then the performance of recent decades must be described as "mixed". Some countries, particularly in Asia, and China in particular, have achieved undeniable success. On the other hand, living standards in Latin America have remained more or less at the same level as the world average, while several countries in sub-Saharan Africa have seen their initial backwardness worsen. As a proportion of the world's population, poverty has decreased. But in terms of the absolute number of poor people, it is only in the last few years that it has begun to decline. And in both cases, the progress is due above all to China's exceptional performance. Today, 1.3 billion of the planet's inhabitants still live in destitution, on less than one euro per person per day, in terms of the purchasing power of developed countries.
Should we conclude, as some do, that, with a few exceptions, the economics and practice of development have simply failed, and that we have learned little from national development experiences as they have unfolded over the last 50 years? Is the best we can do today, then, simply to help the world's poorest by providing them with additional purchasing power, or by helping them to ensure their children's education and good health? And should we give up on finding the engine of growth that will create the productive jobs that will enable people to improve their living conditions?
We're not there yet. A wealth of knowledge has been accumulated on the mechanisms of development and the fight against poverty. It shows the extraordinary variability, in space and time, of these mechanisms, of the constraints to which they are subject, and of the policies to be implemented, and consequently the formidable difficulty of generalizing from individual experiences. It also shows the mistakes made by relying on an overly simple and often doctrinal vision of economic development. The aim of this lecture was therefore to evaluate this knowledge by revisiting the major debates in development economics in the light of the theoretical and empirical elements available today. Some of the key ideas are presented here.