Kates, R. W., and P. Dasgupta. 2007. African poverty: A grand challenge for sustainability science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(43):16747-16750.

1.2.3 PROMOTING HUMAN WELL-BEING: Affluence and poverty Extending a modicum of affluence to the poorer portions of the world and especially to the poorest of the poor is a major need. Almost 1 billion people (18%) are living on less than $1/day and 2.5 billion people (48%) on less than $2/day. As with similar figures on hunger, the proportion of most impoverished people declined in a quarter of a century by half, from two-fifths to one-fifth of the world population living on less than $1 a day. This reduction has varied by region. East Asia has made the most progress, while South Asia and Latin America have had only modest improvement. But there has been no improvement in sub-Saharan Africa where the numbers of very poor almost doubled between 1981 and 2004. Thus the principle poverty challenge in the world is that of sub-Saharan Africa, the region that has shown little or no improvement, even worsening, in all the key indices of health, well-being, food security, and economic growth. A secondary challenge is for the newly-industrializing countries such as Brazil, China, and India, to translate their rapid economic growth into improved well-being for the many poor among them. The Reading is an introduction to a set of articles focusing on poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and summarizes definitions, causes, and proposed poverty polices in that region.

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