Ending global poverty: why wait until 2030?

The United Nations aims to achieve a world free from poverty by 2030. New research finds that this could be achieved much sooner because the causes of poverty are changing.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, in his famous study of famines, found that people tend to starve because they lack entitlements to available food, not as a result of literal food shortages. Is this is also the case for much of global poverty?

Is global poverty less a question of resource scarcity and more a question of who is seen as having entitlement to the growing public and private resources? Could global poverty be ended much sooner?

Andy Sumner is a Reader in International Development at King’s College, London. He holds associate positions at University of Oxford, the UNU-WIDER, Helsinki and the Center for Global Development, Washington, DC.

He is the author of Global Poverty: Deprivation, Distribution, and Development Since the Cold War. Foreign Policy has listed him one of the ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’.

This also marks UiB’s celebration of
UN’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

All are welcome!

This lecture will also serve as the formal launch of the
CROP/UiB Global Working Paper Series, a series that will disseminate research on issues related to sustainability, poverty and inequality. The series was conceived as a vehicle for scholars in our global network to swiftly disseminate their research. Its aim is to provide a conceptual and empirical basis for critical analysis of the most pressing issues of our time and to influence public debate and policy-making.