Book Review: Poverty and Entrepreneurship in Developed Countries by Michael Morris, Susana Santos, and Xaver Nuemeyer

John Belt

This book claims to be the first in-depth examination of entrepreneurship and poverty within advanced economies. The authors see entrepreneurship as a source of empowerment representing an alternative pathway out of poverty. They stress that up to now the initiatives tackling poverty in developed countries have yielded limited or no results. They give the example of the United States where, despite spending many billions of dollars, the poverty rate remains close to 14 per cent, similar to what it was 50 years ago. It is a similar story for the European Union where almost 24 per cent of its population are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. And the tendency is not positive: the disparity between rich and poor continues to grow, indicating a problem in both absolute and relative levels of poverty. The authors see different responses to this: a call for spending more money, spending the existing money differently, letting the poor fend for themselves, redistributing income from the rich to the poor. They suggest another approach: entrepreneurship, where they see venture creation as the pathway out of poverty.