Global Poverty and Inequality: A Brief Retrospective and Prospective Analysis

Abstract

This overview essay on policy responses to global poverty and inequality over the last ten years is structured around four themes. First, drawing on the most recent empirical data, it provides some stylised facts on recent trends in poverty and inequality in developing countries. Second, it considers the distinctive ways in which the UK government in particular has responded to these challenges over the last decade, in the context of the broader global policy effort in which it is embedded. Third, it provides a critique of these responses, finding much to both commend and about which to be concerned. On the basis of this assessment, section four considers some options for the next decade, some quite modest and others more ambitious. Section five concludes.