Sustainable Development Goals and Problems of Measuring Poverty and Extreme Poverty

Abstract

The article presents the results of the study on improving the methodology for measuring poverty and extreme poverty in accordance with the fundamental UN document – the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The author argues his position that when assessing the achievement of targets for the eradication of extreme poverty within the framework of achieving Goal 1 (SDG 1) at the national level, one should not be guided by the average threshold value of extreme poverty for all countries. It is necessary to focus on the gross national income (GNI) per capita, an indicator developed by the World Bank (according to the Atlas method). For the first time, a comparative analysis of the interpretations of SDG 1 by Russian and European researchers, as well as experts of international organizations is carried out, and threshold values of global poverty for groups of countries with different levels of GNI per capita are analyzed. It allows us to identify the main problem of monitoring the eradication of extreme poverty in Russia: the low information content of data on socio-demographic groups experiencing extreme poverty, which, in turn, hinders the formation of effective public policy measures to reduce poverty and eradicate extreme poverty. The paper shows that ignoring the indicator of extreme poverty, calculated depending on the size of GNI per capita using the Atlas method, can lead to erroneous conclusions in the Voluntary National Review of the Russian Federation on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The author proposes to select indicators of global extreme poverty in accordance with the level of socio-economic development of Russia and to assess the eradication of extreme poverty, taking them into account on a par with the national poverty line. In this context, the author draws attention to inaccuracies in domestic publications related to the interpretation of the concept of «extreme poverty», which can lead to distortion of estimates.