"If you look internationally over the last 50 years there have been improvements in the third world, but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened, with debt crises and increased poverty"
About this Quote
As an activist, Korten’s intent is diagnostic and prosecutorial. “Debt crises” is not a neutral descriptor; it’s a clue about causality. He’s pointing the reader toward the architecture of global finance - structural adjustment, IMF/World Bank conditionality, export-driven development, volatile capital flows - and suggesting that what’s sold as modernization can function as extraction. “Third world” (dated now, but common in earlier development discourse) also signals the era of his framework: a world divided into winners and “developing” dependents.
The subtext is a moral argument disguised as a trend report: if poverty is increasing alongside integration into global markets, then “growth” has become a propaganda word. By narrowing the timeframe to “the last 20 years,” he implicitly targets the neoliberal turn: privatization, deregulation, and debt-led governance. His rhetorical move asks a simple, unsettling question: if development is real, why does it come with a bill that keeps compounding?
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Korten, David. (n.d.). If you look internationally over the last 50 years there have been improvements in the third world, but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened, with debt crises and increased poverty. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-look-internationally-over-the-last-50-50281/
Chicago Style
Korten, David. "If you look internationally over the last 50 years there have been improvements in the third world, but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened, with debt crises and increased poverty." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-look-internationally-over-the-last-50-50281/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If you look internationally over the last 50 years there have been improvements in the third world, but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened, with debt crises and increased poverty." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-look-internationally-over-the-last-50-50281/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
