1. Poverty is not a natural phenomenon, at least not in the modern world. It arises because of institutions that enrich a small number of people and deny opportunities to billions of others.
2. The institutions that generate poverty today have a history. Approaching the problem of poverty without historical understanding creates a skewed understanding of why people are poor and leads some people to “blame the victims.” In the same way that wealth inequality in the United States is related to a history of racial oppression that restricted property ownership among racial minorities until quite recently, the enduring consequences of colonial history still afflict the citizens of many countries.