Poverty often begins with poor nutrition and health, especially in early childhood: the poor become trapped in vicious circles of hunger, poor nutrition, ill health, low productivity and poverty. Economic growth, especially
agricultural development, has been essential for driving down poverty rates.Social protection encompasses initiatives that provide cash or in-kind transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against risks and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalized – all with the overall goal of reducing poverty and economic and social vulnerability.

Social protection includes three broad components: social assistance, social insurance and labour market protection.In recent decades we have made considerable progress in fighting global hunger and poverty. A majority – 72 out of 129 – of the countries monitored by FAO have achieved the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the prevalence of undernourishment by 2015, with developing regions as a whole missing the target by a small margin.

To eradicate hunger and poverty, we need a combination of sustained private and public investments and social protection measures. Eradicating world hunger sustainably by 2030 will require an estimated additional US$267 billion per year on average for investments in rural and urban areas and in social protection, so poor people have access to food and can improve their livelihoods. This is more or less equivalent to 0.3 percent of the global GDP and would average US$160 annually for each person living in extreme poverty over the fifteen-year period (FAO, IFAD and WFP, 2015b). Surely this is a relatively small price to pay to end hunger in our lifetimes!