Development Co-operation Report 2013
Ending Poverty
The Development Co-operation Report (DCR) 2013 explores what needs to be done to achieve rapid and sustainable progress in the global fight to reduce poverty. The world is on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving the proportion of people whose income is less than USD 1.25 a day. Nonetheless, we are far from achieving the overarching MDG goal of eradicating extreme poverty. While we have learned much about what works in terms of reducing poverty, “getting to zero” remains a challenge in the face of the intractable difficulties of reaching those mired in extreme poverty.
The report focuses on the very poor and will set out, in concrete terms:
• The nature and dimensions of poverty today
• What development co-operation – and the global partnerships it supports – can do in the fight against poverty
The DCR 2013 will focus on the positive experiences of countries, highlighting policies and approaches that have worked.
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How do we get to zero on poverty – and stay there?
Nearly half a billion people around the world are chronically poor. Chronically poor people are trapped in extreme poverty, which persists for many years and even across generations. Policy makers who really want to eliminate poverty for good need to design policies that not only get people out of poverty and vulnerability, but that also stop people slipping back into poverty, and that address the causes of chronic poverty. This includes paying serious attention to the large share of chronically poor who live in fragile states. Governments wishing to end chronic poverty need to offer social protection policies that provide an income floor for the chronically poor – as for example employment guarantees, social assistance schemes, conditional cash transfers, pensions, child and disability allowances, etc. They also need to undergo a root-and-branch re-orientation and reprioritisation of policies and programmes – especially in agriculture, education, energy and employment. And they need to clearly distinguish among policies to prevent impoverishment, help people escape poverty and address the root causes of poverty. Establishing a target for each of these trajectories would help to improve the quality of policies. What would such targets look like?Target 1: Increase and sustain escapes from poverty until extreme poverty is all but eliminated.Target 2: Reduce impoverishment to zero.Target 3: Reform institutions and eliminate social (including gender) discrimination, norms and inequalities that keep people poor.
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