Few evils disturb our conscience like human trafficking. The statistics are unspeakable: One in every 150 people are trapped in modern slavery, and 25 percent of victims are children under the age of 18.

I have tremendous respect for the work of International Justice Mission (IJM), The Human Trafficking Institute, Redeem International, A21, and other like-minded organizations that are confronting this evil head on. They work with local authorities to protect and rescue people in poverty from violent forms of oppression such as labor trafficking, sexual exploitation, and abuse of power. Their efforts culminate in dramatic moments of rescue, but each of these moments is precipitated by months of work. And tellingly, much of these organizations’ work focuses on helping ensure that the world’s most vulnerable never experience this kind of violent exploitation in the first place. That, it turns out, involves economics.

According to Traffik Analysis Hub, trafficking depends on four fundamentals:

Access to fresh recruitsIncome and the ability to move moneyDemand for the products and services of exploitationLow risk of discovery

It’s easy to see economics at work in the second and third fundamentals. Human trafficking generates $150 billion in revenue each year: a powerful lure for would-be exploiters. There’s no denying, human trafficking is lucrative. There’s also no denying that demand for cheap products and services has caused many to turn a blind eye to exploitative labor practices.

What often seems invisible is the connection between economics and the first fundamental: access to fresh recruits. Gary Haugen, IJM’s founder and president, shared with me that he believes as much as 80 percent of human trafficking is the result of debt and unscrupulous loan sharks.

It’s not hard to imagine. A family living on less than $2/day confronts a need or a crisis. Perhaps their child’s school fees come due, their crops are devastated by drought, or a medical bill exceeds their capacity to pay. Their friends and relatives may be just as hard-pressed and unable to help, or perhaps there’s too much shame in asking, so they seek out the local moneylender. There, they get the funds they need, at a higher price than they might have ever imagined.

In many parts of the world, “5-6” loans are the norm. Individuals borrow five units and repay six, equaling a 20 percent interest rate. The problem is that this rate is either daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the particular loan shark. Consider a loan of $100, perhaps used to take a sick relative to the city for medical treatment. At 20 percent weekly interest, that $100 loan could quickly grow to a staggering $1,849 after just 16 weeks, becoming an inescapable trap for all who fall into it.

Having amassed an insurmountable debt, borrowers can be conscripted into debt bondage, forced to work for little or no money until the debt is repaid. In the meantime, traffickers often insist they’ve amassed new debts: transportation fees, job-finding fees, etc.

We don’t often think of banking as an issue of justice, but we’ve found that a simple savings account is part of an upstream solution to human trafficking, helping families avoid the usurious interest rates and exploitative schemes of predatory moneylenders.

Around the world, 2 billion people—roughly a quarter of the world’s population—do not have access to a safe place to save. When we think about the rural poor, in particular, banks may not be a viable option. For-profit banks won’t see the benefit in serving these communities and populations, and even nonprofit, socially motivated institutions may find it cost prohibitive to establish branches outside major population centers. Access to a bank account is heavily dependent on location, with 91 percent of adults in high-income countries having an account compared to just 28 percent in low-income countries.

Men and women in poverty understand the benefits of savings. Too often, there just aren’t options, causing people to live in places of vulnerability. My late colleague Dave Larson put it this way:

Those living in poverty are like someone on the edge of a steep, tall cliff. Perilously near the edge, it won’t take much of a blow to force them over the edge into a tragic fall. A fire, a flood, a drought, an illness, an accident—these and other traumas could easily result in catastrophe. Savings helps people reduce their vulnerability. In effect, it allows them to take a few steps away from the edge. Farther away, they are at less risk. A blow may push them toward the edge—but not over. When we help people to save money, we’re saving lives. Turns out, savings is an issue of justice. And it is a powerful tool in ending human trafficking.

Through more than 13,000 church partnerships, HOPE International has helped start nearly 100,000 savings groups in 21 countries, reaching almost 1.75 million individuals. And our friends at World Relief, The Chalmers Center, International Care Ministries (ICM), Tearfund, and Plant with Purpose are also training and equipping savings groups. Church leaders inherently understand the value of meeting physical as well as spiritual needs as part of their care for parishioners and communities. They, too, have read Jesus’ proclamation of His mandate in Luke 4:16-30: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

When Jesus spoke of “the year of the Lord’s favor,” He was probably referring to the year of Jubilee. Every 50 years, a trumpet was blown on the Day of Atonement to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (Leviticus 25:10). This proclamation freed people from crushing debt and slavery and returned land to families who had been forced by economic hardship to sell it. Jubilee alleviated the worst effects of continuing indebtedness and poverty; it was the release from debt and the restoration of rightful inheritance.

Our brothers and sisters around the world understand, perhaps better than we can, the importance of both the concrete and the spiritual dimensions of Jesus’ mission. The word “release” in Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew means breaking free from financial debts as well as the release from or forgiveness of sins.

Jesus lived this full definition of release by combining care for the physical person with care for the soul.

God is concerned about economic realities, physical imprisonment, and visual blindness, as well as freedom from the debt of sin and spiritual bondage. Jesus embodied the economics of righteousness, and it’s a joy to watch churches around the world do likewise.

And it’s working: Savings groups are reducing vulnerability, helping families take one meaningful step after another back from the edge. In a 2021 survey of 299 HOPE Zambia savings group members (compared to a control group of peers who are not in savings groups), savings group members reported they are two times as likely to be able to withstand a financial emergency ($57 U.S.) than those in the comparison group. A similar survey in Malawi found that 81 percent of savings group members are prepared to access emergency funds, compared to 37 percent of the broader Malawian population.

We see church-sponsored savings groups as the alternative to predatory moneylenders in underserved communities. Our hope is that one day, loan sharks who prey on the vulnerable would be out of business. We want to help reshape economic systems for God’s glory and the good of those who are vulnerable. Grassroots banking might not seem glamorous, but it is an issue of justice.

We need those who bravely break down the doors of brothels and help establish and enforce laws. We need those who investigate and prosecute perpetrators of exploitation, and we need those who ensure families are nowhere near desperate enough to consider bonded labor or the sale of their children a viable income-generating opportunity. In the economics of righteousness, there’s a need for us all.

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International Labour Organization, “One in every 150 people are trapped in modern slavery,” September 12, 2022, https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/multimedia/video/institutional-videos/WCMS_855438/lang–en/index.htm.

Stop the Traffik, “Definition and Scale,” https://www.stopthetraffik.org/what-is-human-trafficking/definition-and-scale/.

Stop the Traffik, “Traffik Analysis Hub Showreel 2022,” July 4, 2022, https://vimeo.com/726687628.

Stop the Traffik, “Traffik Analysis Hub,” https://www.stopthetraffik.org/what-we-do/traffik-analysis-hub/.

Asli Demirguc-Kunt, Leora Klapper, Dorothe Singer, and Peter Van Oudheusden. The Global Findex Database 2014: Measuring Financial Inclusion around the World, Policy Research Working Paper 7255 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015), datatopics.worldbank.org/financialinc....