How the public is sold an overly rosy picture about success in the fight against world poverty

What is it about?

With a lot of attention given to the Sustainable Development Goals, much importance has come to be attached to how we understand and measure progress against poverty and poverty-related deprivations -- and who is entrusted with performing these tasks. I argue that academic experts rather than governments and intergovernmental organizations (World Bank, FAO) should do the assessments because political agents are far too prone to distort the assessments for political ends.

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Why is it important?

It is widely agreed that the world now has the economic, technical and administrative capacities to eradicate severe poverty once and for all. And yet, half the world's population is still suffering severe deprivations of one kind or another. We have a shared responsibility to end this avoidable suffering. And for doing so an accurate understanding of the persistence of poverty -- magnitude, geographical and demographic composition, trends -- is essential.

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