The $2 dollar of income per day benchmark may not be a fair or accurate way to measure extreme poverty, Nobel prize-winning economist Sir Angus Deaton said on Tuesday. Speaking at the Overseas Development Institute, he urged development actors to improve the quality of data used to measure aid interventions.
Deaton’s comments laid a strong critique of the catchy $2 per day tagline and other metrics used by many organizations advocating for the Sustainable Development Goals, suggesting that what works well for capturing the public’s attention might not work as currency for beneficiaries.
Deaton, who revolutionized the measurement of household data for consumption in developing countries, said “keeping track of [aid interventions] is unbelievably important, and we ought to be devoting more resources than we are to find out whether things are working or not even at the most basic level.”
About the author
Molly Andersmollyanders_dev
Molly Anders is a former U.K. correspondent for Devex. Based in London, she reports on development finance trends with a focus on British and European institutions. She is especially interested in evidence-based development and women’s economic empowerment, as well as innovative financing for the protection of migrants and refugees. Molly is a former Fulbright Scholar and studied Arabic in Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco.
