How to Alleviate Widespread Poverty (and Create Wealth)

Christians and all people of good will should be concerned about poverty at home and abroad, and want to do something about it. Unfortunately, there is strong disagreement about how to do so. One way to resolve the disagreement is to consider the top ten conditions that allow countries to prosper, the lack of which correlates with poverty. Since there is one known pathway to widespread prosperity, the prudent strategy is to help others find their way up the path, rather than seeking to forge a new and untested one.

Jay W. Richards, PhD, is Director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family and the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation. 

He is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and Editor-at-Large of The Stream.  

Jay is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); The Human Advantage; Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; The Hobbit Party with Jonathan Witt; and Eat, Fast, Feast. His most recent book, with James Robison, is Fight the Good Fight: How an Alliance of Faith and Reason Can Win the Culture War.

He is also creator and executive producer of several documentaries, including three that have appeared widely on PBS. 

Jay’s articles and essays have been published in The Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Washington Post, The New York Post, Newsweek, Forbes, Fox News, National Review Online, The Hill, Investor’s Business Daily, Washington Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Huffington Post, The Federalist, The Daily Caller, and many other publications.

His work has been covered widely in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Nature, Science, Astronomy, Physics Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Congressional Quarterly Researcher.

Jay has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs, including Larry King Live (CNN), CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Huckabee, Dayside, Fox and Friends, Studio B with Shepard Smith (Fox News), Glenn Beck TV, PBS, CBN, TBN, and is a regular guest on EWTN.

An experienced public speaker, he has spoken at academic conferences; college and university campuses in the United States, Europe, and Asia; many think tanks in the U.S. and Europe; public policy meetings; and on several occasions to members of the U.S. Congress and U.S. congressional staff. His 2008 debate at Stanford University with Christopher Hitchens, moderated by Ben Stein, was broadcast live to several hundred churches in North America.