(Dec. 22) – One of the great success stories of the 20th century was the decline in poverty among the elderly. That story, however, is starting to change.

(Dec. 22) – Should we fight the “war on poverty” all over again? Their new report — “Opportunity, Responsibility and Security” — lays out a plausible strategy for confronting poverty. The study was co-sponsored by the left-leaning Brookings Institution and the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

(Dec. 21) – Researchers at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy partnered with Salvation Army to develop the Human Needs Index, a real-time measure of poverty that they hope will better inform both policy makers and service providers of the true on-the-ground needs of poor Americans.

(Dec. 15) – Global trade talks opened Tuesday with host Kenya highlighting their role in combating poverty, and urging African nations to diversify their economies. War-torn Afghanistan and Ebola-ravaged Liberia are set to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) as it holds a ministerial conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, its first such meeting on African soil.

(Dec. 14) – The United Ways of California recently authored a report that presents our own basic needs budget approach, “The Real Cost Measure.”

(Dec. 14) – Asian-Americans are one of the fastest growing groups in the country and will be the largest immigrant group in the U.S. by 2065, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. They are also widely described as being more educated and better off than the average American. In a recent column, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof celebrated the hard work and strong families behind the overwhelming success of Asian-Americans. He called it “The Asian Advantage.”

(Dec. 14) – 2015 has been a remarkable year for development, with new agendas agreed on financing for development, reducing disaster risk, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Agendas and goals, however, are one thing; implementing them is another. Much will depend on whether the world can provide the decent jobs and livelihoods for all which would underpin further human and sustainable development.

(Dec. 13) – With inequality now at pre-New Deal levels, it could be that there is more opportunity than ever to pursue Moynihan’s top goal of the 1960s, the establishment of a children’s allowance, something that would help every American family, the poor especially, blacks most of all.

(Dec. 12) – Haidt convened a group of policy people from across the political spectrum to talk about issues of concern to each side, and discovered that one issue everyone really cared about was poverty. The group worked together for more than a year to produce a report, released last week, entitled Opportunity, Responsibility and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream.

(Nov. 28) – I take it to be a truism that we’d all like the poor to be richer. That means, before we design public policy to achieve that, we’ve got to work out why people are poor.