The Promise of Continuing Poverty

 A new report warns up to one billion people are at risk of extreme poverty by 2030. It’s estimated there were 1.2 billion people in extreme poverty in 2010. Last October, the World Bank reported about 400-million children continue to live in “abysmal conditions.”

Unemployment, poor health, high food prices, conflict and natural disasters – these are some of the things that can drive people below the poverty line of $1.25 a day.

“People fall into poverty as well as escape it. And once they’ve escaped it they can fall back in again.” The Overseas Development Institute and the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network Director Andrew Shepard warns of poverty’s revolving door. “You can be poor the whole of your life, chronically poor. And policies, generally speaking, don’t deal very well with that. You can become poor. You can be impoverished. Policies are beginning to address that a little bit better than they did 10 years ago, but there’s still a long way to go on that, especially in Africa, and actually also in Asia. And then once you escape poverty, you need to keep on in an upward trajectory. You need to keep on moving away from poverty because you can easily fall back in again,” he said.