Featured image for “‘It feels like a more innocent time for Oxfam and for our belief in progress’: looking back on Make Poverty History ”

‘It feels like a more innocent time for Oxfam and for our belief in progress’: looking back on Make Poverty History 

February 3, 2025
Twenty years after he watched Nelson Mandela’s rousing launch speech in Trafalgar Square, Dominic Vickers reflects on the impact of the landmark Make Poverty History campaign for trade justice, debt relief and better aid – and wonders if a new generation can take up the cause again. 
Read more >>
Featured image for “Want to tackle inequality? Start with fair taxes and giving the Global South a real voice at the IMF and World Bank”

Want to tackle inequality? Start with fair taxes and giving the Global South a real voice at the IMF and World Bank

January 22, 2025
Global inequality will continue to spiral in a skewed system of international finance and governance that heavily favours the Global North, says Anthony Kamande in the latest blog in our Davos series.
Read more >>

Don’t get the hump, but what really changed on global income, and what didn’t?

March 29, 2019
I was wondering when that phrase would appear…..  Andy Sumner & Kathleen Craig of the King’s Department of International Development continue the humpology debate. Duncan’s blog on the global hump and Jose Manuel Roche’s reply raise the question of what has actually changed and what hasn’t. Here’s (yet) another take and in an attempt to be less geeky and more narrative-based,
Read more >>

The hump counter attack! Jose Manuel Roche sets me straight on the global transition (or lack of it)

March 20, 2019
Quite a few people disagreed with aspects of my recent post shifts in the global distribution of income. José Manuel Roche, Head of Research for Save the Children UK, felt moved to respond. I enjoyed Duncan’s recent blog about the shift from a two hump to a one hump world. Who wouldn’t? So I’d like throw in my two pennies’ worth
Read more >>

What are the consequences of the shift from a two hump to a one hump world?

March 7, 2019
I’ve been using this idea in a few recent talks, and thought I’d test and improve it by bouncing it off FP2P readers. It uses a simple pair of graphs on global income distribution to start thinking through how the ‘aid and development’ sector is changing, or resisting change. The starting point is that we have moved from a two
Read more >>

What does ‘Dignity’ add to our understanding of development?

February 7, 2018
Guest post from Tom Wein, of the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics, based in Nairobi. Is your program respectful? How, exactly, do you know that? Did you ask people? Development aims to give people better lives. In doing so, we mainly aim to increase wealth and health – in part because we can measure those outcomes with ease. But there’s
Read more >>

Davos is here again, so it’s time for Oxfam’s new report on prosperity and poverty, wealth and work.

January 22, 2018
As the masters of the universe (or at least planet earth) gather in Davos, here’s a curtain-raiser from Deborah Hardoon, Oxfam’s Deputy Head of Research, introducing its new report. Gotta love a data release. Every year I look forward to the release of the Credit Suisse Global Wealth databook. An immense piece of work, developed over a decade and led by
Read more >>

A wonderful book by Jean Dreze, India’s Orwell

November 27, 2017
Notes from my talk at last week’s launch of Jean Drèze’s new book, Sense and Solidarity. Has anyone written Jean Drèze’s biography? If not, why not? A fascinating figure, surrounded by myths and legends (did he really sleep rough in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the square next to LSE, when he was a lecturer there?). He’s a wonderful writer who reminds
Read more >>

Is inequality going up or down?

November 2, 2017
My Oxfam colleague and regular FP2P contributor Max Lawson sends out a weekly summary of his reading on inequality (he leads Oxfam’s advocacy work on it). They’re great, and Max has opened his mailing list up to the anyone who’s interested – just email max.lawson@oxfam.org, with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line. Here’s his latest effort – a long, but excellent
Read more >>

RIP Tony Atkinson: Here he is on our personal responsibility for reducing inequality

January 2, 2017
Tony Atkinson, one of the world’s great thought leaders on poverty and inequality, died on New Year’s Day. Combining intellectual rigour and a profound commitment to social justice, his life’s work epitomised the economics profession at its best. Here he is in the final chapter of his 2015 book ‘Inequality: What can be done?’ ‘I do not accept that rising
Read more >>

Talk is cheap, but will the World Bank really step up on inequality?

October 4, 2016
Max Lawson, Oxfam’s Head of Development Finance and Public Services raises the curtain this week’s World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings before hopping on the plane to Washington I have been going to the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF longer than I care to remember, certainly since most Oxfam policy wonks were still at school. Every time
Read more >>

The 2016 Multidimensional Poverty Index was launched yesterday. What does it say?

June 3, 2016
This is at the geeky, number-crunching end of my spectrum, but I think it’s worth a look (and anyway, they asked nicely). The 2016 Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index was published yesterday. It now covers 102 countries in total, including 75 per cent of the world’s population, or 5.2 billion people. Of this proportion, 30 per cent of people (1.6 billion) are
Read more >>