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The Meaninglessness of Ending 'Extreme Poverty'

The real meaning of a poverty line in flux
relates to The Meaninglessness of Ending 'Extreme Poverty'
Photographer: Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg

This September, the world’s leaders will converge on the United Nations to declare a new set of Sustainable Development Goals for planetary progress over the next 15 years. Their first target will be to “eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.” That’s a heady vision, one already embraced both by U.S. President Obama and Jim Kim, president of the World Bank—the organization that set the $1.25 poverty line back in 2005.

There's just one problem: According to the World Bank, extreme poverty isn't what it used to be. It turns out that the technique the bank has used in the past to set the extreme poverty line essentially guarantees we won’t wipe out extreme poverty by 2030—or ever. To save face, the World Bank's economists are likely to change the method to one that creates a definition of extreme poverty that can be eradicated. But in doing so, they’ll set a poverty line that will move further and further away from anyone’s actual idea of what it is to be poor.