On 30 March 2019, author and Associate Professor in social policy and development studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Andrew Fischer, was interviewed by the radio and podcast programme This is Hell! based in Chicago and broadcast live on WNUR 89.3FM. The 36-minute long-form interview was on his latest book, Poverty as Ideology.
'Last year the Trump administration changed the poverty measure from a more conventional income-based approach to a proxy-means approach, and in the process reduced the measurement of poverty in the US from 18.5 million people living in extreme poverty to about 250,000. And then Trump proudly declared that poverty had been eliminated from the US just by adopting this new measure. These types of measures are problematic because they can be arbitrary in terms of what variables you include and don't include.' - Andrew Fischer, on This is Hell! radio and podcast programme.
In this interview, Andrew Fischer, who studies poverty and the study of poverty, discussed the neoliberal frame of mainstream poverty research, from the deeply flawed metrics and methods used by global development groups, to the ways consensus capitalist logic reinforces a set of 'de-politicised' poverty reduction policies that amplify inequality across the globe.
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For a podcast recording of this interview, listen to -Â On Poverty as Ideology
- Associate professor