世界银行行长在霍华德大学英语演讲
Dean Harvey, thank you for that warm welcome and, President Frederick, thank you for the kind introduction. And thank you to the students, staff and faculty for being excellent hosts. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a president of the World Bank Group has addressed the Howard community. I am grateful to everyone here who made this opportunity possible.
哈维院长，谢谢你的热情欢迎;弗里德里克校长，谢谢你的介绍词。感谢所有前来的学校师生和员工。据我们了解，这是世界银行集团行长第一次在霍华德大学发表讲话。我向所有促成此事的人员表示感谢。
In preparing for this speech, we did some research on Howard’s history. I was impressed with what we found. I am honored to be at an institution once led by James Nabrit, one of the leading constitutional and civil rights lawyers of his generation; and I am humbled to be at a place that helped shape the thinking of Pauli Murray, a courageous feminist trailblazer and thinker. Over varied and highly accomplished careers, both Nabrit and Murray worked to make the world a more just place. At the Bank, we are driven by the same aspiration.
在准备这次演讲的过程中，我们对霍华德大学的历史做了一些了解，而了解到的情况给我留下了深刻印象。今天来到这个曾由著名宪法和民权律师詹姆斯·纳布里特领导的大学，我深感荣幸;而在这个曾塑造了女权主义先锋和思想家保莉·莫瑞思想的学府发表演讲，也让我不胜惶恐。纳布里特和莫瑞通过他们多样而成功的事业使这个世界变得更好。而在世界银行，也正是这样的愿望激励着我们的工作。
Over the last two years, I have led an effort at the World Bank Group to reorganize the institution to accomplish our twin goals: end extreme poverty by 2030; and boost shared prosperity among the poorest 40 percent in developing countries.
在过去两年里，我领导了世界银行集团进行重组，以实现我们的两个目标：一是到2030年前终结极度贫困;二是促进发展中国家最贫困的40%人口共享繁荣。
The first goal is ambitious, and it reflects the tremendous progress we’ve made over the last quarter century in the fight against poverty. In 1990, 36 percent of the world’s population, or 1.9 billion people, earned less than $1.25 a day. By next year, our economists estimate that that rate will have declined to 12 percent – a two-thirds reduction in 25 years. This means that, by next year, one billion fewer people will be living in extreme poverty than in 1990. That’s major progress. However, helping the next billion escape poverty will be far more difficult. We have much work to do, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 450 million people wake up in poverty each day.
第一个目标非常宏大，它也反映了过去四分之一世纪我们在抗击贫困方面所取得的巨大进展。1990年，世界上36%的人口——即19亿人——每天收入不到1.25美元。而到明年，根据世行经济学家的估计，这个比例将下降到12%。也就是说，全球贫困人口比例在25年内下降了三分之二。这意味着到明年为止，世界上生活在极度贫困中的人口将比1990年减少10亿人。这是巨大的进步。但是，帮助下一个10亿人摆脱贫困将是更为艰巨的任务。我们还有很多工作要做，特别是在撒哈拉以南非洲，那里有大约4.5亿人每天早上醒来就面对着贫困。
The second goal – boosting shared prosperity – is what I want to talk with you about today. We are working to ensure that the growth of the global economy will improve the lives of all members of society, not only a fortunate few. To accomplish this, the World Bank Group aims to achieve specific income-related and social goals: We want to raise the income of the lowest 40 percent of earners in developing countries, and improve their access to life’s essentials, including food, shelter, health care, education and jobs.
而第二个目标——促进共享繁荣，是我今天想与你们讨论的重点。我们正在努力工作，以确保全球经济增长可以改善社会上所有人的生活，而不只是少数幸运儿从中受益。为此，世界银行集团力求实现具体的收入目标和社会目标：我们要提高发展中国家收入最低的40%的人口的收入，改善他们对生活必需品的获取，包括食品、住房、医疗、教育和就业。
Let me put this in perspective: For the first time in the history of the World Bank Group, we have set a goal that aims to reduce global inequality. As the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa shows, the importance of this objective could not be more clear. The battle against the virus is a fight on many fronts – human lives and health foremost among them. But it is also a fight against inequality. The knowledge and infrastructure to treat the sick and contain the virus exists in high and middle income counties. However, over many years, we have failed to make these things accessible to low-income people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. So now, thousands of people in these countries are dying because, in the lottery of birth, they were born in the wrong place. If we do not stop Ebola now, the infection will continue to spread to other countries and even continents – just yesterday the Centers for Disease Control confirmed the first case of Ebola in the United States. This pandemic shows the deadly cost of unequal access to basic services and the consequences of our failure to fix this problem.
让我从历史的角度来强调一下“促进共享繁荣”的重大意义：这是世界银行集团历史上首次确立一个旨在减少全球不平等的目标。正如西非埃博拉疫情所表明的，减少不平等的重要性不言而喻。抗击埃博拉是一场全方位的战斗——最重要的是保护人的生命和健康，但它同时也是一场反抗不平等的战斗。高收入和中等收入国家拥有治疗埃博拉病人、控制病毒扩散的知识和基础设施。但很多年来，我们未能使几内亚、利比里亚和塞拉利昂的低收入者获得和使用这些知识和基础设施。所以，现在这些国家几千人因感染埃博拉死亡，只是因为他们运气不好，出生在错误的地方。如果我们现在不能控制西非的埃博拉病毒，疫情就会继续向其他国家甚至其他大陆传播——就在昨天，美国疾病控制中心证实在美国发现了首例埃博拉感染。埃博拉的流行显示了由于人们不能平等获得基本服务而产生的高昂代价以及因为我们未能解决这个问题而产生的严重后果。
As I will discuss later in my remarks, the World Bank Group and others have begun to take steps to get resources into the right place. Our actions have arisen directly from our decision to make boosting shared prosperity part of the Bank’s primary mission.
待会儿我会谈到，世界银行集团和其他机构已开始采取步骤，向有关地区部署资源，控制疫情。我们的行动直接源于我们把促进共享繁荣作为世行主要使命的决定。
When a visitor enters our Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters, one of the first things she sees is an inscription on the wall that reads as follows: “Our dream is a world free of poverty.” While achieving this goal through development is a complex undertaking, two things are essential. First, we must help low-income countries grow their economies. In the last four years alone, high rates of growth in China and India have meant that 232 million people no longer live in poverty. Second, low-income people who live in low-income countries must share in the gains from that growth. Shared prosperity is part of the Bank’s headline goals simply because it is required to end poverty.
当参观者进入位于宾西法尼亚大街的世行集团总部时，首先映入她眼帘的是墙上的这样一句标语：“我们的梦想是一个没有贫困的世界。”尽管通过发展来实现这个目标是一项复杂的任务，但有两点是最基本的。首先，我们必须帮助低收入国家发展经济。仅在过去四年里，中国和印度经济的高速增长就使2.32亿人摆脱了贫困。第二，生活在低收入国家的低收入人口也必须能够分享增长的成果。共享繁荣之所以成为世界银行的一个核心目标，就是因为只有这样才能消灭贫困。
Boosting shared prosperity is also important in the pursuit of justice. Oxfam International, the poverty fighting organization, recently reported that the world’s richest 85 people have as much combined wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion. Think about that: A group far smaller than the number of people in this room possesses more wealth than half the world’s population. With so many people in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Asia, and Latin America, living in extreme poverty, this state of affairs is a stain on our collective conscience. Protecting an individual’s ability to reap financial reward for hard work and success is extremely important. It creates motivation; it drives innovation; and it permits people to help others. At the same time, what does it mean that so much of the world’s enormous wealth has accrued to so few?
促进共享繁荣对实现社会公正也意义重大。根据扶贫组织国际乐施会最近发表的一份报告，世界上最富有的85个人所拥有的财富加起来相当于最贫困的36亿人所拥有的财富。想一想吧：人数远远少于今天这个会场人数的一群人占有的财富比世界上一半人口的财富还要多。在当前撒哈拉以南非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲还有许多人生活在极度贫困中的情况下，这种不平等可谓是我们集体良知的一个污点。确保每个人可以从辛勤劳动中获得财务收益和成功非常重要——这可以激励人们努力工作，推动创新，还可以使富起来的人有条件去帮助他人。但与此同时，我们必须思考的一个问题是：世界上这么多财富集中在这么少的人手中，这到底意味着什么?
As an economic system, global market capitalism has produced affluence and innovation. These are very good things. However, an economic system’s legitimacy is also tied to its ability to make two things accessible to all: the riches it generates and the social benefits that arise from that wealth. Unfortunately, national income gains from growth tend not to be shared among a population in anything close to equal measure. In his 2014 best seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty showed that, in developed economies, these gains generally flow at substantially higher rates to owners than to workers. Ultimately, we want to ensure the global economic system’s gains are distributed in a fashion that creates opportunity and respects human dignity.
作为一种经济体系，全球市场资本主义创造了大量财富，推动了创新。这些都是非常好的事情。但是，一种经济体系的合法性也与它是否能帮助所有人获得以下两样东西息息相关：该体系所创造的财富以及这些财富所带来的社会收益。不幸的是，经济增长带来的财富通常不能平等地被国民分享。法国经济学家托马斯·皮凯蒂在他2014年的畅销书《21世纪的资本》中指出，在发达国家，资本的所有者从经济增长中得到的益处通常要大大高于劳动者。归根结底，我们要确保以一种有助于创造机会、尊重人的尊严的方式来分配全球经济体系产生的收益。
So what does it look like to boost shared prosperity? As I explained earlier, one important metric is the relative income level of the poorest 40 percent of a national population. During the 2000s, these earners enjoyed more rapid income growth rates than the general population in 52 out of 78 low-income countries. But our mixed progress in achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals shows that the general well-being of households in the bottom 40 percent remains much lower than in higher-income households. In other words, even though their incomes grew faster, low-income households did not reap the same social benefits as the more affluent, including access to food, clean water and sanitation.
那么，如何来促进共享繁荣呢?我前面已经提到，一个重要的衡量指标就是一国中最穷的40%人口的相对收入水平。在2000年代，在全球78个低收入国家中的52个，这些劳动者的收入增长速度快于全国总体收入增长。但我们在联合国“千年发展目标”各领域取得的进展参差不齐，表明收入最低的40%人口的总体生活水平仍大大低于收入更高的家庭。换句话说，尽管低收入家庭的收入增长较快，但他们还是没能象更富有的家庭那样充分从经济发展中受益——包括改善对食品、清洁用水和卫生设施的获取。
Fundamentally, increasing individual incomes, while important, is only part of the equation for boosting shared prosperity. We also need economic growth to deliver benefits that create more just societies. So, in addition to changes in income, boosting shared prosperity focuses on improving gender equity and low income people’s access to food, shelter, clean water, sanitation health care, education and jobs.
根本上来说，提高个人的收入固然重要，但它只是推动共享繁荣的一个方面。我们需要通过经济增长来创造更公平的社会。因此，除了增加收入外，促进共享繁荣的工作还要特别重视提高性别平等，改善低收入人口对食品、住房、清洁的水、卫生设施和医疗保健、教育和就业机会的获取。