Provocations for Development: Superb new collection of Robert Chambers’ Greatest Hits

September 4, 2012
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August wonkwar 3: Martin Ravallion v Ricardo Fuentes on inequality

August 29, 2012
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Should poverty be defined by a single international poverty line, or country by country? (and what difference does it make?)

July 24, 2012
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How is poverty research changing? Reflections from some clever people

May 30, 2012
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What does the UN’s first Africa Human Development Report say about food security?

May 16, 2012
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We measure relative poverty in rich countries; absolute poverty in poor ones – what if we combine them?

August 31, 2011
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Africans and food security: what do opinion polls tells us?

April 7, 2011
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What can poverty researchers in the UK learn from the South and vice versa?

March 3, 2011
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300 years of global writing on poverty in one graph

February 3, 2011
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Eliminate poverty, don’t reduce it: Victor Hugo disses the MDGs

November 9, 2010
“I am one of those who think and say that it is possible to destroy extreme poverty. Mark you, gentlemen, I am not saying ‘reduce’, ‘lessen’, ‘limit’, ‘control’, I said destroy. Poverty is a disease of society such as leprosy was a disease of the human body, and can be eliminated just as leprosy has disappeared. Yes, it is possible.
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What should aid focus on, poor people or poor countries?

October 6, 2010
Finally got round to reading the paper that’s been making waves in wonk-land, ‘Global poverty and the new bottom billion: Three-quarters of the World’s poor live in middle-income countries’, by Andy Sumner from the UK’s Institute of Development Studies. In a classic bit of number crunching, Andy takes a fresh look at where poor people now live, and comes to a
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The co-creator of the UN’s new Multidimensional Poverty Index defends her new baby

July 29, 2010
Sabina Alkire responds to the previous posts by Martin Ravallion and me on her new ‘Multidimensional Poverty Index’. She is director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). “As Martin Ravallion points out, we agree that poverty is multidimensional. The question is whether our efforts to incorporate multiple dimensions into the very definition of who is poor and
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