What Would it Cost to End Extreme Poverty?

Roshni Sahoo; Joshua Blumenstock; Paul Niehaus; Leo Selker; Stefan Wager

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arXiv · 2609.02013

What Would it Cost to End Extreme Poverty?

Roshni Sahoo·Joshua Blumenstock·Paul Niehaus·Leo Selker·Stefan Wager

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Abstract

We study poverty minimization via direct transfers, framing this as a statistical learning problem while retaining the information constraints faced by real-world programs. Using nationally representative household consumption surveys from 34 countries that together account for 76% of the world's poor, we estimate that reducing the poverty rate to 1% (from a baseline of 13%) would cost $211 B nominal per year. This is 4.0 times the corresponding reduction in the aggregate poverty gap, but only 19% of the cost of universal basic income. Extrapolated globally, the results imply a cost of 0.28% of global GDP to (approximately) end extreme poverty.

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Roshni Sahoo, Joshua Blumenstock, Paul Niehaus, Leo Selker, Stefan Wager. 2026-09-02. What Would it Cost to End Extreme Poverty?. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02013

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