Crawford School of Public Policy

In the first episode in our ‘Making the invisible, visible’ bonus series, Professor Sharon Bessell joins us to discuss the limitations of the international poverty line and what new research has revealed about the gendered, multidimensional nature of poverty.

It has been 20 years since the Millennium Development Goals were first conceptualised, and in that time a significant number of people have been lifted out of poverty. But with poverty defined narrowly, using household income alone, does that provide a true picture of global poverty at the individual level? For over a decade, researchers from Crawford School of Public Policy have been working on an ambitious project to redefine how poverty is measured, taking an innovative, rights-based and people-centred approach. This research, now ongoing through the Individual Measure of Multidimensional Poverty project, didn’t just assess how many people are poor, but rather how they experience poverty. Regular Policy Forum Pod episodes will still be released every Friday as usual, but over the next six weeks our bonus ‘Making the Invisible, Visible’ mini-series will shed light on the issue of poverty by breaking down the figures provided by this new Measure, getting behind the data, and seeing how it can help policymakers better direct resources. In this first episode, host Aarti Betigeri is joined by Professor Sharon Bessell to chat about why the way poverty is measured matters, plus some of the project’s key findings. Listen here.

Professor Sharon Bessell is Professor of Public Policy and Director of Gender Equity and Diversity at Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University (ANU).

Aarti Betigeri is a multi-platform journalist and former foreign correspondent. She is a correspondent for Monocle and contributes to various other local and international media outlets.

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