The $2 dollar of income per day benchmark may not be a fair or accurate way to measure extreme poverty, Nobel prize-winning economist Sir Angus Deaton said on Tuesday. Speaking at the Overseas Development Institute, he urged development actors to improve the quality of data used to measure aid interventions.
Deaton’s comments laid a strong critique of the catchy $2 per day tagline and other metrics used by many organizations advocating for the Sustainable Development Goals, suggesting that what works well for capturing the public’s attention might not work as currency for beneficiaries.
Deaton, who revolutionized the measurement of household data for consumption in developing countries, said “keeping track of [aid interventions] is unbelievably important, and we ought to be devoting more resources than we are to find out whether things are working or not even at the most basic level.”
In the wake of the launch of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, international organizations are working together to find ways to measure progress toward the 17 global goals. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will launch consultations for its Total Official Support for Sustainable Development Framework next week, where civil society and development organizations can weigh in on the metrics to be used for tracking the broad spectrum of development and humanitarian benchmarks.
But Deaton said many of the strategies for measuring income are inherently flawed and urgently need a rethink.
“I’m not a fan of either the [Millennium Development Goals] or the SDGs, I’m just not sure this is a good way to do things,” he said.
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