Poverty – Debating Development Research

19/10/2023

Will growth be enough to end poverty? New Projections of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

By Arief Anshory Yusuf, Zuzy Anna, Ahmad Komarulzaman and Andy Sumner

Two days ago was the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (you already knew that, right?). In new analysis for UNU-WIDER, we assess progress towards the global poverty-related SDGs, specifically monetary poverty, undernutrition, child and maternal mortality, and access to clean water and basic sanitation. Our analysis then looks forward, making projections on the state of global progress over the coming years, up to the 2030 deadline for meeting the SDGs.

17/10/202317/10/2023

Forging renewed commitments towards eradicating extreme poverty

By Keetie Roelen and Vidya Diwakar

‘Decent Work and Social Protection: Putting Dignity in Practice for All’ is the theme of this year’s UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty held on 17 October. Enabling these outcomes and practices is more pertinent than ever. According to recent reports, the world is currently off track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1 on ending extreme poverty by 2030. The Covid-19 pandemic, rising food and fuel prices, debt and other intersecting crises including climate change and conflict are making lives more precarious and creating new poverty traps.

14/06/2022

Time to consider ‘multidimensional poverty’ and ‘inequality’ in Fiji and the wider Pacific

By Kim Andreas Kessler

The recent adjustment of Fiji’s estimated poverty rate by the World Bank has caused controversies. While it is important to scrutinise this key figure, policy dialogue and policymaking should not miss the bigger picture. Economic poverty is only one dimension of poverty. Besides this, considering inequalities is crucial to evaluate Fiji’s progress and recalibrate polices aiming to enhance the quality of life of deprived Fijians.

17/03/202217/03/2022

Above or below the poverty line

Three key questions for understanding shifts in global poverty

By Andy Sumner and Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez

In 2010 and the following years, there was attention to the fact that much of global poverty had shifted to middle-income countries (for example here, here, and here). The world’s poor hadn’t moved of course, but the countries that are home to large numbers of poor people had got better off on average and poverty hadn’t fallen as much as one might expect with economic growth in those countries moving from low-income to middle-income. There were also some big questions over the country categories themselves. One could say the world’s poor live not in the world’s poorest countries but in fast growing countries and countries with burgeoning domestic resources to address poverty albeit ‘locked’ by domestic political economy (who doesn’t want cheap petrol?) Continue reading “Above or below the poverty line”

03/07/2020

Inheriting Extreme Poverty

By Owasim Akram

After working for more than ten years as a development practitioner in Bangladesh with a tremendous opportunity to observe the lives of the extreme poor while living very closely to them, one simple question kept chasing me all the time: why do millions of them remain still poor despite huge progress in the economy, policy changes and many development interventions both from the Government and other development partners? Is it because such efforts fail to bring the intended benefits across to their lives, or is there something that we are missing and therefore never considered while planning, designing, programming or making our decisions? Continue reading “Inheriting Extreme Poverty”