Capstone 2024

For my Capstone project, I decided to tackle trying to understand the trajectory of global poverty in our ever-globalized and turbulent world. I did this by looking at data and analysis from resources like the IMF and World Bank, focusing on a few large-scale failings of the global financial system to do right by developing countries.

For my capstone project, I created three products. The first was my research paper, which you can access below. The second is a workshop (which will take place next week) that hopes to help members of my school community interface with direct information about global poverty through the lens of financial institutions, what they are doing positively and negatively, and how we can be informed global citizens when it comes to one of the most directly destructive issues globally. Thirdly, with the same goals as my second product, I created a small infographic that provides some important information on the facts and figures that outline global poverty today and in the recent past.

Product #1 Reserch Paper

Link to Product #2 Workshop

Link to Product #3 Infographic

Ultimately, the conclusion of my research is:

Global poverty has receded, and we, as a species, have made massive strides in combating it. Still, the next steps in combating global poverty will take place in countries that don’t have the same geopolitical pull as China and India. Less centralized regions with less global influence can not use the same tactics as these economic powerhouses, which were able to exert influence by scale in spite of the poverty they contained.

One facet of combating global poverty out of many is through a lens of global finance. We have seen institutions like the World Bank and IMF make massive progress in building developed and robust markets all around the world, and at the same time, we have seen organizations across the gamut weaponize capital to extract resources against the developing world for their own financial gain.

So, we, as participants in a global market, need to call on the institutions that regulate global commerce to do better at regulating how the global free market can interface with the markets of underdeveloped nations that are negotiating from a fundamentally unequal position.