Domestic resources insufficient to eradicate extreme poverty, international solidarity needed

The very first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reads: “By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $2.15 a day”. As we have passed the halfway point since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, it is time to assess progress towards this universally accepted goal.

In this paper, Adrien Fabre analyses the prospects for achieving this goal country by country.

Key findings:

• Without redistribution, even with a very optimistic annual growth rate of 7% between 2022 and 2030, 3% of humans would still be living in extreme poverty in 2030.
• National capacity to eradicate poverty is measured using the concepts of antipoverty cap or antipoverty tax required to finance poverty eradication, and income floor (financed by a given income tax). With credible annual growth of 3%, even capping incomes at $7 a day cannot eradicate extreme poverty in 5 low-income countries.
• In other words, neither growth alone nor growth combined with radical internal redistribution could eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. By contrast, a transfer of just 0.14% of global income could achieve this goal.
• As the proposal of a global wealth tax is gaining momentum, this paper confirms that international solidarity is needed to achieve the first SDG.

AUTHOR

• Adrien Fabre, CNRS, CIRED, WIL Fellow

MEDIA CONTACT

• press[at]wid.world