THE EVOLUTION OF FIGHTING POVERTY AS AN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT
THE EVOLUTION OF FIGHTING POVERTY AS AN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT

Summary/Abstract: The 70 plus years of conceptual and institutional evolution of the fight against poverty as an international effort has had its philosophical, economic and institutional foundations, including UN log-rolling between East and West, North and South but resulted in the current policies to end poverty. This article offers a review this history and analyses the contemporary perspectives the efforts of the UN institutions and the World Bank Group to coordinate the reduction of poverty, and discusses the economic factors behind the success of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to halve extreme poverty, revisiting the outcomes for different regions. The understanding of differences between regions helps outlining what worked and what could support the future fight of poverty. It also features the East European countries that in the period between 1990 and 2007 moved from central planning to market economy, some of them eventually becoming new members of the EU and already belong the group of high-income countries. Their case underpins the analyses of the current constellation of factors to fight poverty. Previous optimism of economists and statisticians is questioned through a critical analysis of the external assistance in poverty fighting strategies, the persistence of high extreme poverty shares in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, by statistical indications of slower pace of poverty reduction in 2018-2019, and, finally, by the negative externalities of the Covid-19 pandemic and the sharp and deep economic slowdown globally. The paper end by an account of policy mixes that could speed up or at least keep the direction and the trend of the poverty reduction world-wide.

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