Brookings Institution’s “Future Development”: The road to ending poverty runs through 31 severely off track countries
Geoffrey Gertz, post-doctoral fellow, and Homi Kharas, interim vice president and director, both for global economy and development at Brookings, discuss findings from a report identifying countries that are least likely to achieve the end of extreme poverty by 2030. The authors write, “We find there are 31 countries that are projected to have poverty headcount ratios of at least 20 percent in 2030. We refer to these places as severely off track countries (SOTCs). … While the scale of challenges facing SOTCs is daunting, history also shows us that progress is possible. Indeed, if we had set about identifying a list of severely off track countries 20 years ago, it likely would have included two countries that have achieved dramatic successes in recent years … Such experiences demonstrate that countries that are currently off track are able to get back on track, and are not destined to fail” (2/13).