www.eerp.usp.br/rlae POVERTY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: GLOBAL STRATEGIES

The leaders of the 189 Member States of the United Nations and international organizations agreed, in 2000, to support the global development strategy known as “Millennium Development Goals ” and pledged to comply with a series of development goals disposed ion the Millennium Declaration. One of the established goals is to reduce the population who lives in extreme poverty, identified in 1990, by half. This goal was originally defined in relation to an international poverty line of approximately one American dollar (US $ 1.00) per capita/per day, according to American prices in 1985, which were converted to national currencies through purchasing power parity exchange rates. Poverty is a social, economic and complex phenomenon, whose dimensions and determinants are numerous. But it can be defined as a set of income deficiencies and its reduction requires the combination of economic growth and reduction of social inequality. The region of Latin America and the Caribbean registers the highest social inequality level in the world. In 1999, considering the international extreme poverty line, incidence levels varied from 0.2 % i