With the post-2015 era approaching, debates surrounding poverty have seriously started to consider what makes for quality growth in order to eliminate extreme poverty, rather than just reduce it. Zero poverty cannot be realised without tackling chronic poverty. However, due to lack of data and evidence, poverty-reduction policies hardly consider the particular situations and characteristics of the chronically poor. In order to fill such research gaps, this paper examines the trends and characteristics of chronic poverty in rural Cambodia between 2004 and 2010.
Photograph: Ippei Tsuruga
Read More“If you had to identify the three main policies that you consider key in eradicating extreme poverty, what would they be?” This question was asked to Andrew Shephard, CPAN’s Director, during the presentation of the 2014 Chronic Poverty Report at the DAC Development Debate in Paris last 15 April. To answer Erik Solheim’s question, DAC Chair, and in line with the Chronic Poverty Report 2014, Andrew identified the three main policies that can challenge chronic poverty, stop impoverishment and sustain escapes from extreme poverty.
Read MoreMeeting 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
Read MoreIn a recent speech at the Bond conference, a meeting of UK organizations working in international development, the UK secretary of state, Justine Greening, seems to suggest that we need not be concerned with pro-poor growth. In her view, poverty will fall as a rather automatic consequence of economic development. Throwing some numbers in to support the argument she says “We know wherever long-term per capita growth is higher than 3%, poverty falls significantly”. Is that really the case?
Read MoreThe Secretary-General’s Open Working Group has been in session for over a year now, and has produced a compilation of 19 ‘focus areas’ which are an excellent basis for its formulation of prototype Sustainable Development Goals over the next few weeks. However, 19 goal areas will be too many, and in this blog, Andrew Shepherd demonstrates how the focus areas could be combined to produce a goal structure that is convincing and intuitive, but also neat and memorable - and so capable of mobilising support from individuals, civil society, the media and governments over the period of time necessary to implement the measures. It also includes a proposal for a new Poverty Eradication Goal.
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