Too Poor for Peace? Global Poverty, Conflict, and Security in the 21st Century

Five years ago, the World Bank published Breaking the Conflict Trap, a groundbreaking book identifying intrastate war as a critical barrier to poverty eradication in a large cohort of developing countries (Collier et al., 2003). Too Poor for Peace? Global Poverty, Conflict, and Security in the 21st Century picks up where Paul Collier and his colleagues left off, this time focusing on the impact of poverty on violent conflict. The book’s broad thesis is that alleviating poverty in the 21st century is not only a moral but also a security imperative.