TAU’s Mints Prize Awarded to Poverty Expert Sabina Alkire

Prof. Sabina Alkire received the 2020 Prize of TAU’s Boris Mints Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions to Global Challenges (BMI) for her “exceptional contribution to the understanding of the dynamics and implications of poverty” at a digital ceremony last month.

Alkire, director of the Oxford Poverty and Development Initiative, made poverty studies a more exact science when she developed the Multidimensional Poverty Index to provide accurate and actionable data to policy-makers, together with Prof. James Foster. The Index has already been applied to 101 countries.

“It is obvious to everyone that the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic will dramatically aggravate the problem of poverty, and not only in the less economically developed countries,” said Dr. Boris Mints, President of BMI. “Against this landscape, the scientific and practical activities and civic position of our laureate, Sabina Alkire, takes on special significance, arousing great respect and admiration.”

Since 2017, the $100,000 BMI Prize has been given to an exceptional individual who has devoted his or her research to solving a strategic global challenge, and whose public action and ideas have made a transformative impact on global policy formation and contributed to the welfare of a significant number of communities worldwide. The Boris Mints Institute was founded in 2015 at Tel Aviv University.

“It’s so heartening that the Institute would recognize poverty to be a global challenge that needs a strategic policy solution,” said Prof. Alkire in recognition of her award.

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“Prof. Alkire’s research is precisely the type of work BMI is encouraging and a very worthy recipient for the Prize. This research has had practical results in helping to understand and reduce global poverty,” said Prof. Itai Sened, head of BMI.

Members of the Institute’s International Advisory Board attended the ceremony remotely, among them former Prime Minister of Montenegro Igor Lukšić and former Prime Minister of Armenia Prof. Armen Darbinian. Also present online was Prof. Michael Kremer of Harvard University, 2018 BMI Prize Laureate and 2019 Nobel Prize Laureate.