National poverty targeting and employment programs
September 12, 2018
The conquest of poverty is a core target of the World Bank. Even as it often is viewed—or maligned—as an instrument of capitalism and capitalist interests, the World Bank’s focus on poverty alleviation and on achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals means that the multilateral institution has a strong role to play wherever countries struggle with poverty. In Lebanon, efforts to overcome poverty are hampered already by a dearth of information regarding how much poverty actually exists, when measuring deprivation along two lines of extreme and upper poverty—which, for Lebanon, were defined respectively as living on less than $2.4 a day, and having a budget of $4 a day. The World Bank is engaged in a number of programs in Lebanon that are aimed at improving the fortunes of the poor and the poorest of the poor.