Eradicating Poverty: Pathways towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Reducing absolute poverty and ending extreme poverty is at the top of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) the member states of the European Union together with all other United Nation’s members agreed to work upon towards the year 2030.

Since 1990, almost all developing countries have made considerable progress in reducing their population shares living below the poverty line.

However, this progress was less dynamic in the 49 countries in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), where in 2017 out of a total population of 1 bn people 400 million still lived in absolute poverty.

As poverty is a root cause for spreading instability and conflict the high numbers of the poor on its neighbouring continent is of special concern for the EU and the EU member states.

In literature, there is somehow consensus that progress in poverty reduction may result from economic growth, from the implementation of social protection schemes and of minimum wages and from governance conditions, which influence a country’s performance in reducing poverty.

Reviewing the literature shows that the academic debate on the determinants of poverty reduction takes place in disciplinary silos, that modelling and empirically analysing replicates approaches that work for high-income economies but ignores structural differences between high-income and developing countries, and that there is a large gap in understanding the determinants of poverty reduction.

ADAPTED is a doctoral training framework that breaks the existing silos.

It delivers high-level training with intersectoral relevance *in validating pathways towards poverty eradication, *in analysing interactions between poverty reduction and other policy areas, *and in optimising the impact of poverty reduction policies to early stage researchers to bridge the existing knowledge gap by equipping them with a unique skills portfolio that is equally attractive for research institutions, development organisations and internationally active firms.