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Last year I wrote an open letter to Steven Pinker, questioning his triumphalist narrative about global poverty reduction. I never received an answer. But I've worked on this issue a bit more since then... https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
Here, elaborating the argument further and connecting it to the problem of inequality: https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents
Here, which I think in some respects gets to the real nub of the issue: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/7/13/the-racist-double-standards-of-international-development/
Here on Citations Needed, if you prefer podcasts: https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-58-the-neoliberal-optimism-industry-and-development-shaming-the-global-south-cf399e88510e
And here, about the question of life expectancy: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/22/progressive-politics-capitalism-unions-healthcare-education
And I think this year's report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights is indispensable reading for this debate. https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1280037912244035585
Finally, it's important to keep in mind what's happened this year, with an additional 400 to 500 million people pushed into poverty by the pandemic: https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/wp2020-77.pdf
