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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.

Continue reading “Time to consider ‘multidimensional poverty’ and ‘inequality’ in Fiji and the wider Pacific”
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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”

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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”

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Inequality: Driving Forces and Policy Solutions

By Carlos Gradin and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa

The many faces of inequality

Measuring inequality isn’t as simple as it may seem. We know that since the 1970s global inequality has been falling in relative terms, but absolute inequality has been increasing over the same period. There are also substantial differences in trends across the different regions of the world. In North America, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa inequality has been increasing steadily in both relative and absolute terms, while in Latin America, East Asia, and the Pacific, absolute inequality increased while relative inequality fell. Continue reading “Inequality: Driving Forces and Policy Solutions”

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More humility about what we think is good:

Reflections on revising the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index

By Sabina Alkire, Usha Kanagaratnam and Frank Vollmer

In her Oxford University Press blog post, “Some value safety, others value risk”, Valerie Tiberius, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, invites the reader to reflect on how to value well-being and a good life.

The blog was written in promotion of her latest book, “Well-Being as Value Fulfillment”, and Tiberius discusses the acts of Colin O’Brady and Louis Rudd, both married and one a father, who became the first to cross the Antarctic unsupported in 2018 for no other apparent reason than: it had never been achieved before. Continue reading “More humility about what we think is good:”