Measuring Poverty in order to Eradicate It

In 2000, the UN established its Millennium Development Goals, with the notable aim of halving extreme poverty by 2015. That same year, the European Union launched its Lisbon strategy, containing an injunction to “make a decisive impact on the eradication of poverty by 2010”. Since 2007, France has set a national target of reducing poverty by one third over five years. These proactive policies call, in all three cases, for technical elucidation to define and describe poverty. Each of the three scales – French, European and international – has its own approaches and methods of quantification. And yet their similarities are more significant than their differences.