7 takeaways: How can evaluation drive more sustainable solutions to end poverty?

On 15 October 2026, in observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the Future of Evaluation dialogue discussed how evaluation can drive more sustainable solutions to end poverty.

Progress against extreme poverty is slowing, and many who escape it fall back after a single shock. Evaluation matters here because it shows what works, for whom, why and under what conditions. This dialogue examined how evaluation can provide an understanding of why poverty persists, what keeps people out of it, and how evaluative evidence can shape lasting solutions.

In case you missed the conversation, watch the recording.

Seven takeaways from the dialogue

1. Poverty statistics show the scale of the problem, and evaluation explains it. A poverty rate shows how many people are poor, not why poverty persists, why some programmes fail, or whether an apparent improvement is real. Answering those questions is the work of evaluation. Without it, policies may address the symptoms of poverty rather than its causes.

2. Poverty is multidimensional, and the evidence should be too. What evaluation chooses to capture determines what becomes visible and what stays hidden. Household income alone does not show whether people can access health care, education or other basic rights. A multidimensional approach to measuring poverty, established in law and reported publicly at regular intervals, captures these deprivations and gives policymakers a shared and rigorous reference point for debate. Such an approach needs the statistical power to disaggregate by gender, ethnicity, age and region, since poverty affects these groups differently. Evaluation should use these disaggregated measures to ask whether programmes reach each group and whether the gaps between groups are closing.

3. Evaluate whether the pathways out of poverty are working and reaching the poorest. Poverty reduction depends on multiple, complementary pathways. First, it requires expanding income-earning opportunities through productive employment and inclusive economic growth. Second, it requires strengthening human capital through investments in education, health, and other essential services, enabling poor and vulnerable groups to take advantage of those opportunities. Third, it requires social protection and safety nets to help prevent people from falling into poverty because of adverse shocks and to support those facing severe deprivation or other barriers to improving their well-being. So rather than asking only whether poverty rates have changed, evaluation should ask whether these three pathways are functioning effectively and reaching the poorest and most vulnerable.

4. Evaluate the system that produces poverty outcomes, not only the project. Good project results rarely last where institutions, policies and information systems are weak. Sustainable poverty reduction depends on a clear strategy, adequate resources, the means to identify the poor and vulnerable, and measures that protect people from shocks. Three pathways deserve particular attention in evaluating poverty reduction, namely income opportunities, human capital and social protection. Evaluation should therefore assess whether strategy, resources and institutions support these pathways, not only whether projects delivered their outputs.

5. Make evaluation forward-looking. Poverty is increasingly shaped by climate shocks, economic instability, conflict and digital exclusion, and these crises interact. Evaluation can anticipate emerging vulnerabilities by combining longitudinal poverty data with real-time evidence and linking programme data to external data on conflict, drought and flooding. Inclusion has to be an explicit evaluation question, because the poorest are otherwise left out of the analysis. Adaptive approaches that generate evidence during implementation allow programmes to adjust while there is still time.

6. If change is not sustainable, it is not transformational. Sustainability, as an evaluation criterion, asks a harder question than whether a programme delivered its results. It asks whether the structural drivers of poverty were addressed, which a results framework built around a single programme cannot show. Evaluation has adopted the language of complexity and systems, but in practice it often falls back on linear results frameworks. Closing that gap means developing new methods, instruments and data sources. It also means accepting that evaluation is political as well as technical, since deciding what counts as success is never a purely technical choice.

7. Evaluation should measure meaningful changes in people's lives rather than programme delivery. The Youth in Evaluation champion from Cloneshouse highlighted a mid-term evaluation of a youth employment programme across three African countries. Training targets were largely met, but progress into jobs and businesses was limited, income gains often fell short of basic needs, and young women were less likely than young men to find work despite equal enrolment. Counting people trained would have missed all of this. The barrier was usually the participants’ environment rather than their skills. Young people should help shape evaluation questions, interpret findings and form recommendations, and they are not a single group, since circumstances differ by gender, disability, location and background.

The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse.

This was the fourth dialogue of Season 2. The fifth dialogue will take place on 25 November 2026 in observance of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Register. Season 1 dialogues are available here.

This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.