Empowering people to manage their own money with a one-off cash payment could have an enduring impact on homelessness, if the “beautifully surprising” results of a Canadian initiative are anything to go by. The New Leaf Project, a scheme led by Vancouver-based Foundations for Social Change (FSC) saw a one-off payment of CAD7,500 (around $5,600) given to 50 homeless adults, compared to a control group of 65 homeless people who did not receive any money. The initiative, which began in 2018 and was...
The excessive use of technical language in international development can keep vital information away from the people who need it the most. Gender-empowering multi-sectoral capacity building facilitates knowledge sharing and engages stakeholders in inclusive sustainability. If you understood that sentence, you probably work in the world of international development. If you did not understand it, you are part of the rest of the world that is essentially locked out of understanding much of the publ...
Is eradicating poverty, a goal the United Nations’ hopes to achieve by 2030, actually feasible? New research out of Ecuador says yes – if governments are willing to pay for it....
Reports on the fight against global poverty are often optimistic — sometimes too optimistic. Part of the problem is “our” reliance on a simplistic measure, which draws an absolute poverty line of $1.90 per day in so-called 2011 international purchasing power parity. What can we do differently and where should we draw the line in our attempts to eradicate extreme poverty? The leading international source on poverty statistics, the World Bank, has many sophisticated measures avai...
The world is an unfair, unequal, insecure and unhealthy place for about half its population. Around 30% of ‘us’ have no access to adequate healthcare when needed, and 40% face a complete or near-complete loss of income security when a personal or a national economic crisis strikes. At least a third of the global population live in abject poverty (under US$3.10 per day) – i.e., the cruellest form of insecurity. Every second child is poor and 5-10 million children die every year of preventable cau...
Eradicating poverty has been a global priority since the founding of the United Nations. Thanks to international efforts, the number of people living in extreme poverty around the world has fallen by more than half over the last three decades: 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015, according to the MDG Report of 2015. Yet despite impressive progress, more remains to be done in terms of poverty reduction and levelling the playing field – both between and within countries....
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, 25-27 September 2015 in New York City. Goal #10: Reduce inequality within and among countries A large share of the world’s population — those living in low-income communities of developing countries — are locked out of the global economy. They have limited access to products, markets, and opportunities to increase their well-being and develo...
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, 25-27 September 2015 in New York City. Goal #1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere On 25th September, 15 years after the Millennium Summit, world leaders will reconvene to decide a new set of global development targets: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Their primary objective, or Goal 1, will be to ‘end poverty in all its forms...
Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich? How are wealth and poverty related to changes in health, life expectancy, education, population growth and politics? This book on development by Prof. Adam Szirmai, published 15 June 2015 by Cambridge University Press, explores the dynamics of socio-economic development and stagnation in developing countries. Here the author sets out the essential context. Throughout the book there’s one key concept: productive capacity. I see this as the core...
The World Bank’s goal of cutting extreme poverty to less than 3% by 2030 is not achievable, says poverty expert Dr. Richard Bluhm. Development goals should be more realistic and policies should aim to build up institutions that promote inter-ethnic trust and long-term economic growth. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim says we can eradicate extreme poverty worldwide. In the last quarter of a century, the number of extreme poor has fallen by two-thirds: in 1990, 36% of the world’s population had t...