From VOX
The low, low cost of ending extreme poverty
Less than Americans’ holiday shopping, actually.
By Sara Herschander
When it comes to fixing the world’s worst problems, it’s easy to pretend that we’re helpless...
But, it turns out, that’s simply not true. According to a new report by a group of anti-poverty researchers that uses AI tools to achieve unusually granular data of the picture on the ground, the price tag for completely ending extreme poverty would be just $318 billion per year. Using targeted direct cash transfers, it would cost around 0.3 percent of global GDP to ensure that virtually everyone has enough to pay for the absolute basics — the food, shelter, and medicine they need to survive each day...
“That’s not actually feasible; it’s not a shovel-ready plan,” said Joshua Blumenstock, one of the co-authors and an associate professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, whereas “the number we’re coming up with is actually much closer to something you could work with...”
“What’s really striking is that it’s not that much money,” said Blumenstock. “Extreme poverty exists not because it’s prohibitively expensive to address,” he said, “but because it is institutionally and politically difficult” to get people to prioritize it.
Joshua Blumenstock is a Chancellor’s Associate Professor at the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
