Halving world poverty 1

There has been considerable disagreement about whether, or to what extent, the world is on track to meet the United Nations (UN) Social Summit target of halving ‘incidence of dollar-a-day (1993 purchasingpower parity or PPP) poverty in developing and transitional countries’ (hereafter called ‘world’ or ‘global’ poverty) in 1990-2015. The International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD’s) Rural Poverty Report (2001) argued that big changes were needed to do so. However, far from arguing that this target was ‘doomed to failure’, the Rural Poverty Report showed that sufficient poverty reduction to meet the target had been achieved in many places and at many times – when, and where, there was rapid, poverty-oriented, employment-intensive rural development, usually based on rising yields of staple foods. Unfortunately, progress in yields of staple foods and land reform slowed right down between the 1970s and the 1990s, as did poverty reduction. Between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the real value of aid to agriculture fell by almost two-thirds.