Meeting the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) – i.e. getting to zero extreme poverty everywhere by 2030, is not going to be easy, nor cheap. Business as usual won’t do, and doing things differently should include framing policy making for poverty eradication in terms of poverty dynamics: policies to bring the chronically poor up to the poverty line, policies to support escapes from poverty of those who have reached the poverty line, and policies to prevent impoverishment (Shepherd et al., 2014). While different policy packages will be required in different contexts, three areas of interventions will be essential everywhere and for all poverty dynamics