Poverty eradication: the need for good citizenship

Abstract

This paper makes use of game theory to argue that poverty and inequality can be understood as the outcome of a repeated game in which the players are caught in a poverty trap, or “prisoners’ dilemma”. They can escape this dilemma by means of cooperation and co-ordination, requiring appropriately designed “institutions” or “game rules”. However, such institutions or game rules may be only a necessary, not a sufficient condition for this. From the perspectives of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology a case is made for the indispensability of good citizenship to poverty eradication.