Transitioning to No Poverty

Front matter

a (MDPI

Transitioning to

NO POVERTY

Part 1: Is the World on Track to Achieve SDG 1

The Fight against Global Poverty: 200 Years of Progress and Still a Very Long Way to Go MAX ROSER AND JOE HASELL

Global Absolute Poverty: The Beginning of the End?

SANJAY G. REDDY

SDG 1: The Last 3% MARTIN RAVALLION

Part 2: Policies to End Extreme Poverty

How Can the International Community Eradicate Poverty and Hunger by 2030?

STEPHAN KLASEN

“Leave No One Behind” in Middle-Income Countries.

A Review of Progress and Policies JANN LAY AND JAN PRIEBE

SDG 1 and Women’s Work: Ignoring the Needs of Women and History— The Case of Sri Lanka MEGAN TODD AND KANCHANA N. RUWANPURA

Social Protection in Ghana—History, Equity- Driven Reforms, Financing and Sustainability EDWARD ASIEDU AND ANITA BAKU

Education Access and “Learning Poverty” in Seven Southern African Countries SERVAAS VAN DER BERG

Early Childhood Development: Current Status and Gaps GUNTHER FINK

Part 3: Resources to End Extreme Poverty

Mobilizing Resources for the Poor KATHLEEN BEEGLE AND ALEJANDRO DELA FUENTE

Development Cooperation, Growth and Poverty Reduction: A Survey of the Evidence RAINER THIELE

A Safety Net for You, a Safety Net for Me? Donor Promotion of Social Protection Schemes Faces Policy Coherence Issues FRITZ BRUGGER

About the Editors

Isabel Giinther is Professor of Development Economics at ETH Zurich. She is the academic director of the NADEL Center for Development and Cooperation (www.nadel.ethz.ch) and ETH for Development (wwweethz.eth4d.ch). Through her research and teaching, she aims to help address global inequalities and poverty and to strengthen the collaboration between science, politics, and society. She has conducted research and taught classes in Benin, Burkina Faso, Germany, France, Ghana, Kenya, Switzerland, South Africa, Uganda, and the United States.

Rahul Lahoti is a post-doctoral researcher at ETH, Zürich. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen, Germany, and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Columbia University, New York. His research focuses on issues relating to the measurement of poverty, inequality, gender, labor markets and political economy. He has published in several top-rated academic journals including the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Economic Inequality, World Development, Feminist Economics, and Review of Income and Wealth.

Contributors

ALEJANDRO DELA FUENTE Dr., Senior Economist at the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank.

ANITA BAKU

Dr., Senior Lecturer, Department of Public Administration and Health Services Management of the University of Ghana Business School.

EDWARD ASIEDU

Dr., Lecturer, Department of Finance (Development Finance Group) University of Ghana Business

School (UGBS), University of Ghana.

Affiliate Research Fellow, Chair of Development Economics, University of Passau, Germany.

FRITZ BRUGGER

Dr., Senior Scientist, Center for Development and Cooperation (NADEL), Department of Humanities, Social and

Political Sciences, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

GUNTHER FINK

Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Household Economics, University of Basel, Switzerland.

Head of Household Economics and Health Systems Research Unit, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland.

JAN PRIEBE Dr., German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Georg-August-Universitat Göttingen, Germany.

JANN LAY Apl. Prof. Dr., German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Georg-August- Universitat Göttingen, Germany.

JOE HASELL

MSc, DPhil candidate, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford.

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KANCHANA N. RUWANPURA Professor of Human Geography at the Institute of Geography, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Honorary Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

KATHLEEN BEEGLE Dr., Research manager, Development Research Group, World Bank.

MARTIN RAVALLION

Dr., Department of Economics, Georgetown University, and Ungku Aziz Centre, University of Malaya.

MAX ROSER

Dr., Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, UK.

MEGAN TODD

MSc, Former graduate of the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

RAINER THIELE

Professor Dr., International Development Research Center, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Germany.

SANJAY G. REDDY

Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, The New School for Social Research, USA.

STEPHAN KLASEN Professor of Development Economics, University of Göttingen, Germany.

SERVAAS VAN DER BERG

Professor of Economics, Resep (Research on Socio-Economic Policy) Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

Abstracts

The Fight against Global Poverty: 200 Years of Progress and Still a Very Long Way to Go by Max Roser and Joe Hasell

Almost one in ten people globally live on less than $1.90 per day and recent projections suggest we are not on track to achieve the goal of eradicating such extreme poverty by 2030. What the long-run history of global poverty shows clearly, however, is that the continued presence of extreme poverty is far from inevitable. The aim of this chapter is to inform our aspirations for the future of global poverty by summarising what we know about its history. To provide this long-term perspective, we present global poverty estimates based on two methods: household survey-based estimates from the World Bank and national accounts-based estimates derived from historical data on GDP per capita and inequality. The latter method allows us to estimate the trajectory of global poverty over the last two centuries. We compare the methods and data underlying these two approaches to poverty measurement. There are discrepancies between the resulting estimates and sources of uncertainty in each case. However, there are key points of agreement, and the main trends on which they converge are robust to various sources of uncertainty. This evidence shows a substantial decline in global poverty rates over the last two centuries, with particularly fast progress made in recent decades. The extent of the changes we see over the long run should embolden us to reach not only for the eradication of the most extreme forms of poverty but for much more ambitious goals still.

Global Absolute Poverty: The Beginning of the End? by Sanjay G. Reddy

The first Sustainable Development Goal of “Ending poverty in all its forms everywhere” must be interpreted in light of an understanding of what “poverty in all its forms” means societally. It cannot be reduced to a narrow technical focus on official targets and indicators. There are reasons for concern that the official indicators are unsatisfactory, and that there is a considerable gap between their focus and the societal understanding of poverty. Even if conventional approaches to global poverty estimation are used, considering a range of alternative poverty lines xiii demonstrates that the choice of poverty identification criterion can significantly influence conclusions drawn about how much poverty there is, where it is, how it is evolving over time, and what are the appropriate priorities and policies. Although poverty is expected to be nearly “eliminated” by 2030 in regions other than sub-Saharan Africa at the lowest poverty lines, this is not true at higher poverty lines. The projected regional composition of future poverty is also greatly dependent on the choice of poverty line, because poverty in the other world regions increases markedly at higher lines. These conclusions undermine the widespread presumption that addressing the problem of absolute poverty worldwide requires a singular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Especially at higher poverty lines, income poverty is a global problem, and sustaining growth throughout the developing world is important for its reduction. Comparison of estimates based on pre- and post- pandemic growth forecasts shows that while the elimination of poverty by 2030 was already unlikely, the global economic contraction due to COVID-19 has made it even more so. For the highest poverty line examined, an additional 500 million people will be poor in 2030 as a result of the growth slowdown due to Covid-19.

SDG 1: The Last 3% by Martin Ravallion

There is a little-noticed but important difference between the World Bank’s original goal for poverty reduction and the subsequent UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). While both target the “$1.90 a day” poverty rate, the Bank’s goal was a 3% rate by 2030, while the SDG is to “eradicate” poverty by 2030. Simple linear projections of recorded progress against $1.90 poverty in the world does suggest that we are on track to attaining the UN’s goal. If we can return to the pre-COVID pace of poverty reduction after two or three years, then we should still be roughly on track. However, closer scrutiny of the pre-COVID data leaves one less optimistic. There are a priori reasons why the last few percentage points could be harder to reach with current development policies. Consistent with that hypothesis, the paper documents recent (pre-COVID-19) signs of a levelling-off in progress for the poorest in East Asia—the star performer regionally over the longer term. This is evident in the region’s slower progress recently in both lifting the floor—and thus reaching the poorest—and in reducing the poverty rate. This levelling off is also found, on average, for the 18 developing countries that have reduced their poverty rate from over 10% (around the current global rate) to under 3% during the period 1981-2017. Similar to East Asia, progress in reaching the poorest declined once the xiv last 3% had been reached, though some countries did better than others. Overall, the results suggest that returning to “business as usual” post-COVID will not suffice to eradicate extreme poverty.

How Can the International Community Eradicate Poverty and Hunger by 2030? by Stephan Klasen

In vowing to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030, the international community has set itself an extremely ambitious goal as the success of this venture depends on effectively addressing a number of challenges in the poorest countries. The classic instruments of development cooperation can contribute little to this agenda. Instead, a much broader agenda must become a political priority of the international community and must involve political, economic, and occasionally, even military engagement.

“Leave No One Behind” in Middle-Income Countries.

A Review of Progress and Policies by Jann Lay and Jan Priebe

We show that “Leave no one behind” (LNOB) can be a meaningful guiding principle for national development policy as well as development cooperation in middle-income economies, as very unequal progress threatens the gains for the poor in countries graduating from low to middle-income status. Our review, measuring the progress of LNOB, clearly illustrates the huge data gaps that remain for key LNOB indicators. Disaggregated indicators or data to compute them are often not (yet) available. Our brief and selective review of LNOB-relevant policies and approaches in middle-income countries shows a very rich foundation for evidence-based policy-making, particularly in education, health and social protection. Some clear messages emerge, for example, a clear call for progressive universal policies in education that emphasize equality in learning achievements. In general, the sectorally interlinked challenges of implementing LNOB demand integrated approaches that combine education, health, and labor market components and pay attention to mainstreaming anti-discrimination efforts.

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SDG 1 and Women’s Work: Ignoring the Needs of Women and History—The Case of Sri Lanka by Megan Todd and Kanchana N. Ruwanpura

Our paper evaluates SDG 1 with regard to labour reforms in Sri Lanka, by seeking to understand how women workers in the garment sector may be affected by proposed changes to the laws. Our paper is based on a decade of fieldwork, supplemented by interviews and recent archival work. We first give an account of Sri Lanka’s recent history. It offers a necessary context, given that politics and legacies from the ethnic conflict continue to mar current efforts. Critically, it is found that ethnic divisions continue to create tensions, and that these have often been exacerbated by labour conditions. Through investigating the place of women workers in Sri Lanka’s apparel sector, including the North and the East of Sri Lanka, we show that labour insecurity remains, and discrimination is rife. Importantly, Sri Lanka has thus far failed to position women’s experiences accurately in SDG1 by failing to consider its linkages to SDG5, SDG8 or SDG10. The current inability of policies to alleviate the position of women workers in relation to SDG1 places added importance to recent labour policy reform, which tends to be neglected because of an emphasis on creating pro-market friendly labour conditions.

Social Protection in Ghana—History, Equity- Driven Reforms, Financing and Sustainability by Edward Asiedu and Anita Baku

Social protection has become very important in development policy, due partly to the widening gap in health, income and opportunities between the rich and the poor. The growing number of national social protection policies and interventions implemented by many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, ties into the emerging consensus around the view that social protection provides an effective response to poverty and vulnerability in developing countries. This chapter examines the history of social protection in Ghana, highlighting the key social protection reforms and interventions to assess how they are aligned with the attainment of societal equity. The historical antecedent of social protection policies and programs in the past three to four decades is therefore provided in order to illustrate a rigorous background for the design and strengthening of social protection in the decade ahead. We also provide a discussion on the financing of social protection policies and their long-term sustainability, emphasizing the role of xvi technology in the sustainable delivery and targeting of social protection programs.

Education Access and “Learning Poverty” in Seven Southern African Countries by Servaas van der Berg

Against the backdrop of the shift in emphasis from the MDGs, with the educational focus on access, to the SDGs with the focus on educational outcomes and equity, this chapter discusses some education issues and policy responses in seven southern African countries. These countries—South Africa and its six neighbours—cover a wide economic development range: Mozambique is a low-income country, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Eswatini lower-middle income, and Namibia, South Africa and Botswana upper-middle income countries. Examples from these countries show little evidence that the focus in policy debates and practice has shifted to the educational goals formulated and propagated by the international community. This may well also be the case in many other developing countries. The continued focus on broadening access needs to be supplemented with steps to reduce “learning poverty”.

Early Childhood Development: Current Status and Gaps by Günther Fink

We review the literature on early childhood development as well as the current knowledge on developmental gaps between high-, middle- and low-income countries. While current data on children’s early developmental outcomes are limited, the available evidence suggests that early trajectories are comparable among children growing up in home environments providing adequate support and stimulation globally. Large gaps in physical and likely also cognitive early development persist in low- and middle-income countries due to poverty, lack of maternal education and lack of early learning opportunities. These gaps can be reduced by continued efforts to reduce poverty and increase education, as well as targeted government programs to support parents and children during the first few years of children’s lives.

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Mobilizing Resources for the Poor by Kathleen Beegle and Alejandro de la Fuente

The SDG agenda to address poverty needs to extend beyond shifting programs and policies. It also requires a careful revisit of a range of fiscal issues especially in countries in Africa that are poor and also resource constrainted. Current levels of public spending in Africa that effectively reach and benefit the poor are not nearly sufficient and often poorly spent. This chapter explores how poverty reduction can be accelerated by mobilizing more resources, domestically and internationally, and by spending more efficiently and with a greater focus on the needs of the poor in terms of both raising their income today and investing in the next generation in Africa. What is the path to tackle these challenges? First, on the revenue side countries need to mobilize more resources domestically. While mobilizing domestic revenues (with VAT expansion currently a favorite vehicle), countries need to make sure the poor are net receivers. Other promising avenues include improving tax compliance, with a larger focus on local large taxpayers, corporate taxes and transfer (mis)pricing (which has a global agenda), as well as excise and property tax collection. Yet, even with improvements in domestic resource mobilization, international development assistance will still be critical in the poorest and most fragile countries, for both direct spending as well as to leverage private capital. Aid makes up more than 8 percent of GDP for half of low-income countries in Africa, but in recent years aid to countries in the region has been declining. Second, spending patterns need to shift towards more pro-poor investments and improve in terms of the levels spent in critical sectors, the instrument/programs for a given investment, and the efficiency of implementation. In levels, spending on “pro-poor” sectors has a mixed track record with some generally reaching international targets (like education) but others falling short for many countries (health, WASH, risk management, and agriculture and rural infrastructurel). The choice of program design matters for given spending— untargeted programs can result in large shares of spending going to non-poor households. One obvious area for attention are the currently high subsidy expenditures (in energy and fertilizer)—often regressive with little impact on poverty. Cash transfers seem more effective and efficient than subsidies where evidence exists, but more is needed to compare their performance relative to public good provision for the poor in agriculture and rural infrastructure, security, risk management, education and health. Agricultural and rural spending xviii should tilt more heavily towards investment in public goods. And finally, there are significant inefficiencies in spending that need to be addressed. The low quality of health and education services is not only explained by low spending levels.

Development Cooperation, Growth and Poverty Reduction: A Survey of the Evidence by Rainer Thiele

The donor community has taken a prominent role in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and is likely to stay strongly involved when it comes to achieving the poverty-oriented targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Against this background, the present paper provides an overview of the empirical evidence regarding the impact of international development cooperation on economic growth, (monetary and non-monetary) poverty and inequality in order to assess whether donors have directly or indirectly contributed to achieving internationally agreed upon poverty reduction targets. The general conclusion is that development cooperation can help achieve growth and poverty reduction in partner countries, even though the effects are likely to be modest. Most confidence can be put into the finding that, in accordance with the MDGs, aid for social infrastructure has contributed to achieving non-monetary goals such as higher school enrollment and lower infant mortality. In contrast, it is inherently difficult to empirically identify income effects of foreign aid at the macro level, which the long-standing and still unresolved debate about the aid—growth relationship illustrates.

A Safety Net for You, a Safety Net for Me? Donor Promotion of Social Protection Schemes Faces Policy Coherence Issues by Fritz Brugger

Social protection schemes are effective instruments to fight poverty in “normal” times. During crises, they are even more important to prevent people from falling into poverty, as the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated. Developing countries have long struggled to generate sufficient tax revenue to fund the social programs and investments needed to protect their populations. In recent years the donor community has increasingly converged ona consensus around the need to boost tax revenue as part of the broader development agenda. At the same time, donors have also promoted and defended international tax standards that benefit their business communities, and which, to a degree, work against the ability of developing countries to obtain a fair share of taxes from multinational corporations operating xix in their jurisdictions. The rules for taxing multinational enterprises are brokered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the club of industrialized countries where donor governments are heavyweights. This chapter analyzes the reform of the OECD transfer pricing regulation after the financial crisis, which promised to simplify transfer pricing rules in a way that strengthens the position of developing economies towards multinational enterprises. The reform largely failed to deliver on its promise but was a success for those who benefit from the status quo. The political economy behind the reform points to the lack of policy coherence among donor countries and the deep politicization of the seemingly technical topic of international tax policy.

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Preface: Transitioning to no poverty by 2030

Isabel Giinther and Rahul Lahoti

The first sustainable development goal (SDG 1) is “to end poverty in all its forms everywhere and for all”, which seems to be non-negotiable for the “world we want”, which would provide minimum living standards for all global citizens. However, the question remains: is this goal feasible, especially given the set-backs in the fight against poverty and the unequal access to health resources that we have observed in 2020 and 2021? If yes, how do governments and civil society need to engage and what resources are needed? In this book, we bring together a diverse set of perspectives on SDG 1 from leading scholars around the world. When we first invited scholars in 2019 to reflect on ending poverty by 2030, the world looked very different; or rather, the necessity of global social protection, decent and not only sufficient livings standards and strong international cooperation to fight global poverty became even more apparent—and the pandemic put a spotlight on the lack of these three components. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns across the world have not only led to millions of lost lives across the world, but have also led to large numbers of people falling once again into extreme poverty.

The exact impact of the pandemic on poverty is already difficult to ascertain in the short term, due to data limitations in tracking the living conditions of the most marginalized communities in the world; and more so in the long term: it depends on the speed of the economic recovery across countries, as well as on the long-term consequences that the pandemic has on the health and education of poor households that might lead to long term poverty traps.

Given the uncertainty, estimates of researchers on the short-term impacts vary, but all agree that many of the gains made in the last twenty years in reducing poverty are likely to be lost. Lakner et al. (2021) estimate that around 120 million people around the world have additionally become extremely poor in 2020. In the absence of the pandemic, poverty was expected to decline by more than 30 million people in the year 2020. Sumner et al. (2020) estimate that, in some regions of the world, we might lose 30 years’ worth of gains against poverty reduction. In their worst-case scenario, poverty would increase by about half a billion across the world. Using IFPRI’s global model, Vos, Laborde et al. (2021) estimate that over 150 million additional people could have fallen into extreme poverty in 2020. Some initial estimations also indicate large, long-lasting impacts. UNDP (2020) estimates that the number of people living in extreme poverty will increase by 44-250 million (up from 861 million in No Covid Scenario) in 2030 because of the pandemic. In Chapter 2, Reddy estimates that an additional 500 million individuals will be poor (defined as less than 5 international dollars per day) in 2030 due to COVID-19.

This book starts with a broad perspective on the feasibility of ending extreme poverty by 2030—the likelihood of which has obviously decreased since the start of writing the chapters in 2019 and its publication in 2021. The first three chapters delve into data to present the current status of the progress made against the goals and projections of a reduction in poverty by 2030 across world regions (chapters 1-3). These chapters also discuss several challenges when it comes to measuring extreme poverty, pointing towards our limited understanding of the goal as such. The next six chapters (chapters 4 to 9) discuss the role of policies in ending poverty in all nations, which is now necessary to achieve the goal of no global poverty by 2030. The authors discuss selected essential policies needed to leave no low-income country and no person in middle-income countries behind in more detail, with a particular focus on social protection and investments in new generations, using case studies of countries from across the world. The last three chapters (chapters 10 to 12) discuss ways to mobilize the needed resources to successfully eliminate poverty in the 21st century: achieving SDG 1 requires not only good policies, but also substantive resources to invest in various poverty reduction policies.

Part 1: Is the World on Track to Achieving SDG 1?

A long list of indicators have been proposed for tracking the progress of SDG 1 of “ending poverty in all its forms everywhere” (United Nations 2017). These indicators refer to those deprived according to the international poverty line, the national poverty lines, poverty in all its dimensions, and those who lack access to basic public services and social protection. In addition, these indicators are meant to be disaggregated and tracked by sex and age. However, there is a lack of data to monitor all these indicators, especially by disaggregated groups. Hence, the international poverty line of 1.90 international dollars per day, which clearly defines the most extreme forms of poverty, is among the most likely indicator to be monitored and used to determine success in meeting SDG 1 by the international community by 2030. In chapters 1-3, we present diverse views on the measurement, history and potential future of global poverty. These chapters offer first-hand insights into both the challenges of understanding global poverty and achieving SDG 1.

In chapter 1, Roser and Hasell document the long-term history of poverty reduction and discuss the learnings from history for future progress in reducing poverty. They first show that from 1981 to 2017, extreme poverty in the world (defined as people living below 1.9 international dollars per day) has declined from 42 percent to 9 percent. They also document the changes using a societal poverty line that combines the absolute poverty line with a relative poverty line, defined based on average incomes in the individual’s society. This poverty rate is not only higher, but has also declined at a slower rate: from 45 percent in 1990 to 28 percent in 2017. Similarly, they show that for higher absolute international poverty lines (such as, for example, 5.5 international dollars per day), the pace of decline in poverty has been slower as compared to that of a decline in extreme poverty. To further analyze historical poverty over the last two hundred years, they use average income data from national accounts and historical data on the extent of inequality in each country. These data have, of course, important limitations concerning coverage and quality, but the authors show that even though the exact extent of poverty reduction is difficult to deduce, the broad trends are clearly evident from the data. They find a more or less continuous poverty decline since 1820, with rapid acceleration in the second half of the 20th century. They argue that, based on historical progress made when it comes to poverty, reduction elimination is possible.

In chapter 2, Reddy takes a more critical perspective on how extreme poverty is defined globally and what this means for reaching SDG 1. The author argues that the societal understanding of poverty differs substantially from the technical understanding of how poverty is defined by governmental organizations. A societal understanding of no poverty would mean that everyone is able to meet their basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, etc.), whereas the technical definition is based on the 1.9 international dollars poverty line, which might not be enough to meet the costs to fulfill these necessities in countries that do not belong to the very poorest countries. There is a likelihood that SDG 1 will be met according to the technical view, but not by the societal view of what constitutes poverty. Reddy further estimates poverty using different poverty thresholds and various growth estimates, to determine if the world can achieve the SDG 1 targets. The estimations show that, for the 1.9 dollars international poverty line, poverty would be below 3 percent in almost all regions around the world by 2030, except in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa, poverty in 2030 is estimated to be between 32 and 53 percent, based on the growth projections that are used. However, the outlook and where the poor are located changes substantially if higher, and according to Reddy, “more realistic poverty” lines are used (2.52, 3.02 and 5.04 international dollars). Reddy estimates that with a poverty line of 5.04 international dollars (same as the United States Department of Agriculture food poverty line for the United States), about 35 percent of the world would be deemed poor in 2030, with a far larger fraction coming from South Asia.

In chapter 3, Ravallion argues that it is difficult to achieve the SDG 1 goal of “eradicating” poverty, because the current set of development policies do not reach the poorest. The author argues that linear projections currently used to estimate poverty rates in 2030 based on historical trajectories are misleading. The linear projections might indicate that we are on track to achieve SDG 1 goals, but we might fall short because of both slowing growth rates over the next ten years (even before the COVID-19 crisis) and the difficulty in reaching the very poorest, which has already become evident in many countries. The poorest might be hard to reach due to their remote physical location, persistent social exclusion, dynamic poverty traps and deficiencies in state capacity and policy in reaching the very poorest. Ravallion argues that the progress in poverty reduction declines substantially once a country reaches a poverty level close to 3%. Ravallion investigates the experience of 18 middle-income countries across the world that had reduced their poverty rate to 3 percent, and their success in terms of reducing poverty further. Ravallion finds that countries that have been successful in reducing poverty, both in East Asia and other places, witnessed a substantial decline in the pace of poverty rate reduction once they reached 3 percent levels. This experience was not driven by declines in growth rates, but by an inability to reach the poorest in society. The chapter argues that “business as usual” development policies might not be enough to reach the poorest and to achieve SDG 1, and that a change in policy frameworks is needed

Part 2: Policies to End Extreme Poverty

Building on the analysis of Ravallion, Klasen lays out the required policies for low-income countries, to end widespread poverty in the 21st century (chapter 4). Complementing chapter 4, Lay and Priebe focus instead on the poorest people in middle-income countries and the future policies needed to “leave no one behind” until 2030. Chapters 6-9 discuss two important dimensions of this policy agenda, namely social protection to reach the extreme poor left out of any growth processes, and investments in the future generation, so that as many people as possible can benefit from and contribute to the development of their countries.