By 1 : Aude de Montesquiou and Syed M. Hashemi (Partnership for Economic Inclusion 2 at the World Bank) and Alessandra Heinemann (ADB)
While the past two decades saw spectacular progress in the fight against poverty, more than 10% of the world’s population – 735 million people – still live below USD 1.90 per day. Ending poverty in all its forms everywhere as envisioned in Agenda 2030 will prove challenging. Reaching the poorest is in itself difficult, but even more so is getting them onto a sustained pathway out of poverty because of the need for carefully managed, multi-sectoral interventions.
What could help? The graduation approach is one example of targeted household-level economic inclusion approaches with a proven track record of ensuring sustainable pathways out of extreme poverty.3 The graduation approach is specifically defined as a time-bound multi-sectoral “big push” intervention designed to overcome the multiple barriers that prevent extremely poor and vulnerable households from earning enough income and building sufficient human capital and assets to break out of such extreme poverty. The graduation approach typically offers extremely poor and vulnerable households a sequenced package of consumption support, of access to savings services, technical skills, transfer of productive assets, seed capital or an employment opportunity, and of coaching.
Can poverty be eradicated is the biggest question for development. Progress in poverty reduction was a central success with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Estimates suggest that as many as 
For the second year in a row, the Trump Administration has proposed slashing U.S. development assistance programs by almost a third. Even though strong support on both sides of the U.S. Congress may prevent many – but not all – of these cuts becoming law, it is clear that the best hope for this period may be maintaining current levels of support. As the largest donor country, U.S. leadership on foreign aid is incredibly impactful. For example, based on our experience at Global Citizen, business leaders and policy makers announced 390 collective commitments in response to campaigns we either led or supported between 2012 and 2017. These commitments totaled more than USD 35 billion with nearly half of that, USD 15 billion, coming from just 5 countries, including the United States. And of the total number of new commitments, the United States makes up a nearly a quarter. In fact, the United States has been one of the largest contributors to many of the causes we champion, be it polio eradication, water and sanitation, or food aid.
Countries around the world committed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, achieving some of the SDGs could happen at the expense of the overarching goal of reducing poverty, at least in the short-run.
This September marked the first anniversary of the adoption of the 
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