Poverty Reduction Must Go Beyond Targeting the Poor

As national governments and international institutions focus on cutting poverty in half to meet the Millennium Development Goals, a new UNRISD report warns that current approaches that target the poor or separate poverty from broader processes of economic growth and development are misconceived. In addition, they will leave approximately one billion people destitute in 2015.

Launched on 3 September, the UNRISD Flagship Report, Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics, explores the causes, dynamics and persistence of poverty as well as what works and what does not in international policy thinking and practice. It reveals the multiple and complex processes involved in sustainable poverty reduction, and lays out a range of policies and institutional measures that countries can adopt to achieve it.

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