Not seeing it requires effort. In the world today, despite ongoing economic growth and unprecedented levels of wealth accumulation, those who are poor are all around us. Poverty exists in every community, often lives right next door to (or in the houses of) those with immense affluence. The very present-ness of poverty gives it a taken-for-granted nature: those forced to live in poverty, apparently, are always with us.
But does the fact that the poor have been with us for a long time justify the continued existence of poverty? Are better remedies not possible?
We propose a set of measures that, by getting to its causes, will help get rid of poverty.
Poverty is ordinarily defined as lacking resources for a socially acceptable standard of living. However, the socially acceptable level of living in one country or at one time can be higher or lower than in another, affecting the assessment of poverty. Governments often manipulate poverty lines to present their performance in more favourable terms. The World Bank and others have established universal poverty lines, with different thresholds corresponding to degrees of poverty: daily per-capita rates of $2.15 (extreme poverty), $3.65, $6.85 or, as in the case of the US, $15 a day. While some progress against extreme poverty has been made, the number of poor people increases rapidly at higher and more realistic thresholds. In 2019, one-quarter of Earth’s people, almost 2 billion people, lived on less than $3.65 per person per day, and almost half, 47 per cent, lived on less than $6.85 a day, with many lacking basic necessities like healthy food, potable water and clean cooking stoves.
Meanwhile, wealth has mushroomed. The richest eight people own as much wealth as the bottom 4 billion of the entire planet’s population. That’s an almost impossible fact to wrap one’s head around. It’s like the entire population of the United States – 335 million Americans – were somehow crammed into the authors’ hometown of Durham, North Carolina, while just eight people hogged all the rest of the country. Inequality of this stunning magnitude is known to corrode and destroy critical pillars of modern societies – democracy, opportunity, justice, social peace itself.
The economic pie keeps growing, yet vast poverty remains amid enormous wealth. To deflect from this dark reality, people in power keep advocating economic growth, claiming that a growing pie expands even the smallest pieces.
What kind of growth would be needed to eradicate poverty, and at what cost to people and planet?
On the surface, their logic seems intuitive. If the problem is insufficient food, income or healthcare, increasing the supply should solve the problem. But poverty resists this simple equation. Increasingly, the benefits of economic growth go almost entirely to the already rich, often at the expense of those who have the least. The relationship between economic growth and poverty is complex and often contradictory – sometimes alleviating poverty, but just as often deepening exclusion, inequality and environmental degradation.
This paradox raises difficult and pressing questions: can further economic growth eliminate poverty, or does it perpetuate it? How much, and what kind of, growth would be needed to eradicate poverty, and at what cost to people and planet? Understanding these questions requires understanding poverty not just as a lack of resources, but as a pervasive social reality – a condition of exclusion from work, health, dignity, autonomy and a healthy environment.
Our experience positions us to delve into these complexities. One of us (Anirudh Krishna) is a social scientist who has spent decades collaborating with teams of local investigators in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Peru and the US to understand the lived experiences of poor communities. The other (Dirk Philipsen) is a political economist engaged in a global movement to reframe economic thinking around the wellbeing of both people and the planet.
We have both learned how two interlocking processes – those that produce uncertainty, and those that erect barriers and enforce exclusion – work together to trap people in cycles of poverty. However, before rethinking what poverty really means, we must first address the pervasive myths that distort its reality.
The first myth about poverty is that it has always been with us and always will be. For roughly the first 200,000 years, or about 95 per cent, of human history, there was less technological sophistication and material wealth. There was also, usually, far less inequality. Importantly, while humans experienced hardships both prior to and after the emergence of so-called ‘civilisation’, the evidence that is available relating to early Indigenous cultures on every continent indicates they had not experienced, nor would have been able to recognise, ‘poverty’.
Poverty emerges when social stratification increases, leading to exclusion and restricted access to Earth’s resources. This exclusion worsens when money becomes the primary prerequisite for obtaining essential goods and services. Denying growing numbers of people direct access to food, shelter, trust and other vital resources makes them dependent on money to meet their basic needs and desires. Property enables and enriches those who own it as much as it excludes and impoverishes those without.
Humans were born to an immense abundance naturally existing on our planet
Accounts from ancient history through to the 21st century tell of people made poor by the greed of others. In England, the Enclosure Acts of the 17th to 20th centuries privatised common lands, leaving peasants without means to sustain themselves. Across the Atlantic, enslaved Africans were violently uprooted, their labour extracted in brutal conditions to fuel the wealth of colonial empires. Indigenous peoples across the Americas, Australia and Africa, meanwhile, were subjected to genocidal wars, forcibly displaced, and stripped of their ancestral lands by colonising powers. Behind every tale of dispossession lies a choice – by governments, corporations and elites – to prioritise power and profit over people and the planet. Woody Guthrie’s words ring true: ‘Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.’ In today’s digital age, he might add: And some with a keystroke. Predatory lending, financial manipulation and the unchecked power of multinational corporations continue to deepen global inequality. Land grabs in the Global South, where foreign investors displace small farmers, echo the enclosures of centuries past.
Whether the initial dispossession took place via war, theft, genocide, decree or the rule of law, it is not, however, where humans started. On the contrary, humans were born to an immense abundance naturally existing on our planet. This fountain of natural wealth first had to be parcelled out, fenced in, codified, privatised and licensed, before those not on the receiving end of the bounty could be made into ‘the poor’. As the historian R H Tawney concluded in 1913: ‘what thoughtful people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call … a problem of riches.’
Is poverty always going to be with us? That will depend upon what we do about the conditions that lead to people becoming poor. Poverty is not a natural state but the result of deliberate systems and policies.
The second myth about poverty is that it is about lack of money. Only when the accumulation of wealth became the operating logic of modern societies did our collective journey become all about money and capital. We are schooled to envy those racing along in their expensive Tesla SUVs, and variously to pity, ignore or ‘aid’ those who struggle along in hoopties, rickshaws or simply on foot. Regardless of ideological values, most people assume that ‘lifting up’ everyone to the standards of the (mostly white, male, capitalist, money-rich) Tesla driver is the primary goal. A few alternative voices on the sidelines warn about running out of land to pave over, air and water to pollute, and humans to exploit. However, most remain busy trying to keep up with the flow of traffic, eager to pass those in our way.
Notably, some stretches of highway (the Scandinavian parts, for instance) provide more protections – speed limits, guard rails, better emergency services. Other parts still resemble the caricatures of the 19th-century ‘Wild West’ of North America, with barefoot travellers pushed to the side or simply ignored and run over. Yet, whether the highway runs relatively safely and slowly through Costa Rica, chaotically and dangerously through Nigeria, or is channelled with authoritarian efficiency through China, its logic and direction follow the same rules.
Even a casual observer from another world could not help but notice some odd features of this worldwide race. People seem forever frantically busy – yet neither the purpose nor the destination of the journey are discussed. The pervasive assumption simply seems to be that more is better. But this is a highway to nowhere.
Poverty stems from denied access to resources that society and the planet have in abundance
Above all, the nature of poverty cannot be reduced to a dollar value. If it were that easy, eradicating poverty would be a trivial matter of transferring funds. But in truth poverty is a web of deprivations that extend beyond a person’s bank account. That’s why more nuanced metrics, like the United Nations Human Development Index, attempt to capture the multifaceted nature of poverty by incorporating factors like education and healthcare alongside income. Even these measures, however, fall short of conveying the ways in which poverty disempowers individuals and communities, depriving them of opportunity, stripping them of agency, and stifling their potential.
Poverty is a lived experience. As the antipoverty organisation Five Talents poignantly describes, poverty is ‘an unmet need and an unfulfilled longing’. It is the lack of food, shelter and security. It is being sick but unable to see a doctor, or losing a child to a preventable disease. It is wearing clothes that don’t fit, drinking water that isn’t safe. Poverty is the vulnerability that makes people susceptible to lies, schemes and exploitation. It is an empty refrigerator, a home without electricity, a single toilet shared by a hundred neighbours. It is stress; it is shame; it is pain.
At its core, in short, poverty stems from systemic barriers: the denial of access to resources and opportunities that human society and the planet provide in abundance. Inequality is perpetuated by policymakers’ failure – or unwillingness – to adopt measures that reduce risk and lower precarity.
Poverty thrives not simply because people lack money but because the risks to their wellbeing remain unchecked, and the pathways to flourishing remain blocked. The solution does not lie in merely giving money to the poor but in addressing the root causes of insecurity.
A third myth about poverty is that it is self-inflicted. Such familiar refrains around wealth and poverty are pervasive. ‘People deserve to be rich’ and ‘The poor just need to work harder’ are little more than lazy thinking, unsupported by evidence and unmoored from logic. The reality is that a complex array of factors, from systemic inequalities to economic structures, shape wealth and poverty and, mostly, decide who is rich and who is poor. Platitudes about individualism are woefully inadequate to understand how any of this works.
Take the birth lottery, for instance. Imagine an eight-year-old girl and let’s play through different scenarios of her birth and life. If born in Finland, she would be likely to have parents enrolling her in a good school, with access to universal healthcare. She would live, by global standards, in immense safety and comfort, with the prospect of many professional opportunities, international travel, and life expectancy to her mid-80s. If born in Afghanistan, however, she would likely be denied a quality education, rarely have access to a competent and well-equipped doctor, go through her day navigating hidden landmines and violent police, with the prospect of utter dependence, desperately few chances of escape, and a life expectancy around 60. What is true across nations (Finland and Afghanistan) is also true within them. The accidents of birth shape people’s life opportunities in essential ways.
In the US, social amenities vary greatly by locality. More than any other single factor, one’s postal code determines one’s opportunities – the quality of schools, the safety of neighbourhoods, the availability of jobs. Growing up in a rural area – with lower-quality schools and clinics, erratic electricity, slower roads, patchy internet connection – is a significant liability in many countries, compared with living in the capital city. Everywhere, the intergenerational transmission of privilege is more flagrant in situations of greater inequality.
If poverty is inflicted, it is done by society, not any individual
Neither the eight-year-old in Finland or the one in Afghanistan, nor the little girl in wealthy Presidio Heights in San Francisco or the one in impoverished Riverdale in Detroit deserve these circumstances. They have picked their parents no more than they picked their life chances.
Overall, people rarely become poor or remain poor for faults of their own. On the contrary, poverty follows a distinct pathway. Tracing the life stories of those forced to live in poverty lays bare how, even as they work very hard and expect no handouts, powerful forces are stacked against them and precariousness almost always defeats individual qualities.
To the extent that poverty is inflicted, it is done by society, not any individual. Systems and policies sustain the conditions that keep people trapped in poverty – systems that amplify risks while offering few opportunities for upward mobility. These structures generate vulnerabilities and perpetuate inequality, making it exceedingly difficult for individuals to escape poverty’s grip.
So, to sum up, if poverty is not natural, has not always been with us, cannot be reduced to a number or monetary value, and is not self-inflicted, what is it? What makes one poor or not poor? And what should we do about it?
To answer such questions turns out to be surprisingly difficult. Poverty is a lived experience defined by the crippling social reality of not being able to meet one’s basic needs. It is not, however, a condition that allows for a neat separation between the poor, the near poor, and the not poor. Instead of a clear dividing line with black on one side and white on the other, poverty is better represented in bands of grey.
It requires a moving picture and not a snapshot to visualise accurately the conditions of poverty. While hundreds of millions of people spend their lives in dire need of essentials, a possibly equal number move in and out of poverty, mostly in response to circumstances outside their control. Calamity can come in many forms – a child’s illness requiring doctor’s fees and medicines and unpaid time off; the sudden closure of one’s workplace; eviction from a rented property; the death of a loved one; a drought, flood, theft or lawsuit. For the poor or near poor, any incident is enough to bring disaster.
Many others live in an inbetween state: never far from the precipice, a vast precariat. Most of those who get routinely counted as ‘middle class’ live in the permanent shadow of poverty – one job, one illness and often one nudge away from no longer being able to meet basic needs.
It is this constantly changing nature of poverty that lies at its essence: even as many formerly poor people escape poverty, others in the same neighbourhoods and communities fall into it. Nearly two-thirds of those who are currently poor were not born poor but fell into chronic poverty. For most people in the world, poverty lurks just around the corner, a constant threat.
An effective agenda of poverty elimination is not radical, it is commonsensical
Reducing poverty effectively requires mounting a series of public programmes of increasing complexity. Scholars have long understood that personal income or wealth is a flawed metric for measuring the quality of life. Nearly every aspect of individual wealth relies on a broader public good for its value. To return to the highway analogy: my sleek Tesla is of little use on a road that is full of deep potholes, or too crowded, or unprotected from desperate thieves or corrupt bureaucrats. This truth extends far beyond transportation. Personal wellbeing is inextricably linked to social wellbeing – on access to safe public spaces, good healthcare, potable water and untainted foods, a functioning economy, an educated citizenry, a supportive community and, notably, essentials like peace or a resilient environment. Without public goods, private goods are rendered largely useless. A significant portion of poverty reduction hinges on improved public provisioning and public institutions.
An effective agenda of poverty elimination is not radical, it is commonsensical. It comes with short-term, intermediate-term and longer-term components.
In the short term, the principal focus needs to be on poverty prevention. To bring people experiencing poverty out from under the abyss and to secure for them a less shaky foundation on which to build the future, societies have a responsibility to make people’s lives less risky and more predictable.
Three kinds of risks bear thinking about. The first and biggest source of volatility in poor people’s lives arises from the manner of their incorporation into the global economy. To put it simply, the informal sector is the devil’s workshop. What can be the employers’ wildest dream-come-true – an almost endless supply of cheap, pliant and instantly hired-and-fired labour – is often the workers’ worst nightmare, an endless source of risk, indignities and insecurities.
According to the International Labor Organization, more than two-thirds of the workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, and in parts of Central and South America, is composed of informal workers – those who have no contract, no regularity of employment, few (if any) legal protections, no healthcare or old-age provision. All of them are liable to be dismissed at a moment’s notice, and carry on in this way from day to day, ad infinitum. The proportion of informal workers is nearly 90 per cent in India and approximately 95 per cent in Chad and Mozambique.
The constant fear of losing their jobs gives rise to the spectre of the wolf at the door and the consequent inability to plan and invest meaningfully for the longer term. It’s not just that there is very little surplus; any that exists must be squirreled away for the inevitable rainy days.
Fixing the informal sector is imperative but that is hardly simple since powerful people benefit from access to cheap, plentiful labourers. Yet it is not a demand that requires the overthrow of capitalism. Rather, it is a question of choosing a better capitalism – written contracts, pensions and healthcare, protections against arbitrary dismissal, and access to conflict-resolution mechanisms.
Two other aspects of informality significantly increase risks and make people’s lives unbearably uncertain: informal housing, commonly referred to as slums and shanties, and the lack of formal identity papers. Without formal titles or legal recognition of ownership, people cannot secure business loans, neighbourhoods are excluded from municipal services, and homes remain vulnerable to demolition, adding another source of anxiety and volatility. In addition, many who come into cities from rural areas lack urban identity papers and remain unrecognised by officials and politicians, adding a deeper dimension (and another consequence) of informality. Their children cannot access public health and education. World Bank and UN-Habitat data indicate that as many as 1 billion people could be living in this kind of ‘triple informality’.
Successfully addressing these elements of poverty requires several steps, including granting legal recognition to homes and land ownership, and enabling access to loans, utilities and municipal services. It also involves providing identity documents that ensure access to public health systems, education and legal protections. By transforming informal jobs and homes into reliable sources of stability rather than anxiety, people living near the poverty line are less likely to fall deeper into poverty. With reduced uncertainty and fear of losing what little they have, they are also more likely to make long-term investments in education, skills and their families’ futures, paving the way toward economic and social mobility.
In the US, where healthcare remains expensive for many, the average child poverty rate was 26.2 per cent
Second, health risks constitute another reason why people, no matter if they work in informal or formal positions, are vulnerable to being impoverished. Our team interviewed thousands of people around the world who routinely succumb to what researchers recognise as the medical poverty trap. This problem is particularly severe in countries where the bulk of the population is not covered either by public healthcare or by private/public health insurance. The share of medical expenditure that is paid ‘out-of-pocket’ (OOP) is less than 5 per cent in Botswana and around 9 per cent in Mozambique (as in France), and only around 10 per cent in Thailand (and Cuba and the Netherlands), but rises alarmingly to almost 50 per cent in India and the Philippines, and to 65 per cent in oil-rich Azerbaijan, and an astonishing 76 per cent in oil-rich Nigeria. To take care of their loved one’s medical expenses, families need to come up with a 10 per cent co-pay in Thailand and a 75 per cent co-pay in Nigeria – and that can make the difference between staying afloat and falling into poverty. Families pile up debts and sell assets.
OOP expenses reflect policy choices rather than national wealth. Countries like Costa Rica, Denmark and Tunisia have prioritised affordable healthcare to protect citizens, while others, such as the US, Australia, Nigeria and Pakistan, have not. In the US, where healthcare remains fragmented and expensive for many, the average child poverty rate between 2019-21 was 26.2 per cent, more than 6 percentage points higher than in 2012-14, and comparable to Greece or Chile. Prioritising equitable healthcare access is essential to reducing poverty risks.
Third, the vulnerabilities of both childhood and old age can overturn the best-laid plans of poorer families and communities. Precarious living tends to be most pernicious at the earliest and latest stages of an individual’s life. Pension plans and early childhood interventions are especially powerful ways to counter the risks that push people into persistent poverty.
Prioritising the reduction of social risk and vulnerability will be assisted by instituting a different kind of competition among nations. Comparing the rate at which people fall into poverty – and not the total number in poverty – is a better way of evaluating the effectiveness of countries’ protective antipoverty policies. Nation-states should promote low, preferably zero, rates of people falling into poverty, as they do high GDPs. That would make for a laudable collective achievement – one that is eminently reachable over a relatively short period of 8-10 years.
The next transformative step is to promote and enable upward mobility, taking a medium-term perspective of 10-20 years. Talent – whether we call it ability or creativity – is randomly distributed at birth. However, too many individuals draw the ‘wrong’ tickets in the birth lottery, get surrounded by obstacles to self-advancement, and are unable to benefit from the talents they possess. The lucky few born to richer and more educated parents are better able to hone their inner potential. Most of the rest languish for want of opportunity. Consider the mathematics prodigy who ends up as a janitor because going to college is inaccessible. Or the gifted composer whose talent remains undiscovered because music is not any part of her school curriculum. Yet examples also show what can happen when opportunities are deliberately cultivated. Take the girl from a Kampala slum who became a chess champion because an extraordinary schoolteacher decided to set up a chess club in the community, defying conventional expectations.
Reversing the injustices of the past requires a shift toward ensuring universal access to meaningful opportunities of diverse kinds corresponding to individuals’ different talents and proclivities. Traditional poverty policies have long focused on merely lifting people above the poverty line, neglecting the vast, untapped potential of millions. It’s time for a new approach – one that builds ‘ladders of opportunity’ to unlock individuals’ talents, giving them viable avenues of upward mobility.
Examples from around the world demonstrate this approach. Jamaica, for instance, has nurtured world-class runners, while Estonia has given rise to a flow of world-class tech enterprises; Venezuela produced a series of excellent classical musicians, and smaller countries like Sweden have excelled in everything from high-tech information technology to furniture design.
New ‘ladders of opportunity’ can be constructed everywhere, unlocking human potential in the process
These success stories share common characteristics, such as open access with transparent standards, allowing anyone to participate and know what’s expected of them. Role models and mentors have a crucial part to play in guiding individuals along the way, while intermediate rewards and alternative careers for those who fail to reach the top offer a safety net and encourage participation. Decentralised administration, involving volunteers and civil society actors, ensures that these initiatives are community-driven and responsive to local needs.
TED Talk Talent Is Everywhere (2025) by Anirudh Krishna
By replicating these design principles, new ‘ladders of opportunity’ can be constructed everywhere, unlocking human potential in the process. The truth is, when we connect human potential with commensurate opportunity, we elevate our collective wellbeing.
The rise of automation poses a threat, echoing the enclosures that robbed people of livelihoods in past generations. Experts warn of a dystopian future where robots and AI displace workers, leading to widespread joblessness and technological polarisation. In this scenario, those who control the machines accumulate immense power and wealth, while those who get displaced are forced into poverty. To prevent this bleak outcome, we must establish protections against economic insecurity and recognise the fundamental right of all individuals to share in the planet’s resources and benefits.
The eradication of poverty is a pivotal challenge of our time. As the international development scholar Duncan Green succinctly put it: ‘Fail, and future generations will not forgive us. Succeed, and they will wonder how the world could have tolerated such needless injustice and suffering for so long.’ This fight is not just about alleviating suffering, but also about creating a more just and equitable world for all.
A serious and sustained focus on human wellbeing within existing planetary boundaries requires getting smarter. Instead of relentlessly pursuing more, humanity must learn to say enough, and build systems of collective prosperity that don’t rely on exponential growth. While there is enough for everyone to thrive, the planet will crumble under the weight of endless extraction and rampant consumerism.
Importantly, reducing poverty, minimising inequality and creating more opportunities for everyone benefits not just those who are currently disadvantaged but society as a whole. Societies with less inequality are healthier, safer and more stable, fostering greater trust, innovation and collective progress.
People around the globe are already working on practical plans to radically reduce and eradicate poverty. We do not have a particular preference among these alternative imaginings, and we are agnostic about what to call such a newly fashioned reality – common-good society, post-growth economy, capitalism 3.0, or some other. Whatever the terminology, societies that foster wellbeing for all without violating planetary boundaries and resilience will be different from all previously existing, growth-centred and extractive systems, whether capitalism, communism or fascism. Why? Because they will be designed to be in the service of all, not only the few, and they will include planning for future generations to thrive. Instead of profit, growth or power, such a system prioritises the flourishing of individuals and larger communities, ecosystems and cultures, ensuring that decisions are made with long-term sustainability and the welfare of all life in mind.
We must see healthcare, education, housing and food as human rights, not commodities to be bought and sold
The moral foundation is simple: every individual has a fundamental right to access the basic necessities of life. Call it ‘dignity for all’. We can achieve this by taking human essentials out of the ever-encroaching marketplace. Needs like housing, nutrition, community, education, healthcare and a protected environment should be provided by virtue of being human, not dependent on an individual financial transaction. From land trusts like Vienna’s to publicly owned utilities like those in the US, from universal childcare like Sweden’s to walkable cities like Copenhagen, and from free public transportation to robust public services, we can build societies where everyone has access to what they need to flourish, regardless of their financial situation. While markets can efficiently produce and distribute non-essential consumer goods, they are fundamentally unsuited to ensuring equitable access to resources vital for a dignified life. In market systems, goods and services are allocated not based on need, but merely on the ability to pay, which inherently excludes the poor from accessing basic necessities.
To create a more just and equitable society, we need to de-financialise the provision of basic needs. This means disconnecting essential goods and services from the market economy and recognising that people’s wellbeing is essential to the common good. In other words, we need to start seeing healthcare, education, housing and food as human rights, rather than commodities to be bought and sold.
Few think it is a good idea to deny one’s child opportunities to thrive. The components of a plan for eliminating poverty are clear – in the short term, reducing risks and curbing uncertainty; in the medium term, further developing an infrastructure of opportunity; and over the longer term, achieving a richer and fuller vision of a good life. How much longer, clinging to the highway to nowhere, must we abide the myth that poverty is inevitable for so many of Earth’s children?
