Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from SSIR, author Tim Hanstad discusses five key lessons that philanthropists interested in ending poverty can take away from China's success.

• What other lessons can we learn from governments abroad?

• To learn more about how we can end extreme poverty, click here.

In just four decades, about 800 million people in China have climbed out of poverty, lifting their income above the benchmark  $1.90 or less per day. Remarkably, the country’s poverty rate is now less than 1 percent, down from more than 80 percent when I first conducted fieldwork in China’s rural Sichuan province in the 1980s.

What may be surprising about China’s economic miracle is that those of us working in global philanthropy and social change organizations arguably had little to do with it. What may be even more shocking is that we've failed to pay enough attention to China's achievement and the lessons it holds.

The most successful eradication of poverty in human history deserves a thorough examination. I've identified five key lessons from the nation that should inform our own strategies:

  1. Expand Primary Healthcare and Literacy
  2. Prioritize Agriculture and Land Rights First, Then Industry
  3. Advance Policy Reforms That Harness the Power of Markets
  4. Improve Governance Through Decentralization and Market Reforms
  5. Help Women Drive Economic Growth

The fastest growing economy in Africa, Ethiopia, has applied many of these lessons to great effect ... The results are impressive: Ethiopia's GDP growth has been 7 percent or more each year since 2004 and regularly hit double digits, most recently 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund.

I am not saying that China has demonstrated best practices that should be applied everywhere. But it has achieved the greatest success in pulling people out of poverty in human history and may have found pathways out of poverty that we can adapt and adopt. I have noted a few lessons from China’s experience, but surely there are many more. By humbly approaching further investigation with an open mind, we can uncover additional insights that will challenge our approaches to fighting poverty and help us spread prosperity to more people around the world.

Read the full article about lessons in philanthropy by Tim Hanstad at Stanford Social Innovation Review