During the last half-century, the conventional wisdom has been that poverty can be diminished automatically through economic growth. This has got to change. During the next half-century, the world's most fundamental problem – as agreed by the biggest international agencies and a growing number of governments – is that wealth and poverty are becoming increasingly polarised, and that a different priority has to be followed.

Any resolution of this problem depends on connecting three concepts – poverty, social exclusion, and social polarisation – and bringing them into sharper and more distinguishable focus. Together they provide the basis for the scientific breakthrough to explain the problem, and develop the exact policies required to deal with it, as well as steer the international community away from impending disaster.

Poverty

Poverty was at the top of the agenda of problems formulated by Robert MacNamara, Director of the World Bank, at the end of the 1960s. Despite the mixed story since then (development, indebted nations, multiplying barbarism, extreme inequalities in living standards in the aftermath of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the East Asian economic crisis, and much more besides), it has again risen for the last decade to the top of the Bank's agenda. From 1990 onwards, reports on the subject from the international agencies have multiplied. The number of general, country-specific and methodological reports issued by the Bank that may be said to be poverty-related threatens to swamp us all. The Bank's eagerness is supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international agencies, especially the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and by non-government organisations, especially Oxfam (for example, see Oxfam, 1995; Guidicini et al, 1996; Oyen et al, 1996, among others). In 1989, John Moore, as Secretary of State in the Department of Social Security (DSS), stated that the problem did not apply to the UK (Moore, 1989). Early in 1999, Alastair Darling, Secretary of State in the DSS, proudly announced a programme to undertake a poverty audit “and so place the problem at the top of the nation's agenda”. Poverty is a recognised evil but has lacked precise agreed definition and a scientifically constructed remedy. The US has its own definition and measure, which the international agencies do not relate to their priorities for development.