What Would it Cost to End Extreme Poverty?

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02013v1
• Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:41:48 GMT
• Title: What Would it Cost to End Extreme Poverty?
• Abstract summary: We estimate that reducing the poverty rate to 1% (from a baseline of 13%) would cost $211 B nominal per year.<n>This is 4.0 times the corresponding reduction in the aggregate poverty gap, but only 19% of the cost of universal basic income.
• Score: 1.5565498035895329
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: We study poverty minimization via direct transfers, framing this as a statistical learning problem while retaining the information constraints faced by real-world programs. Using nationally representative household consumption surveys from 34 countries that together account for 76% of the world's poor, we estimate that reducing the poverty rate to 1% (from a baseline of 13%) would cost $211 B nominal per year. This is 4.0 times the corresponding reduction in the aggregate poverty gap, but only 19% of the cost of universal basic income. Extrapolated globally, the results imply a cost of 0.28% of global GDP to (approximately) end extreme poverty.

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