The Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) was founded in 2000 to challenge, through research, the apparent omission of almost a billion people from the 2015 poverty target of the Millennium Development Goals. The first decade of the 21st century has illustrated the power of economic growth and human development to bring large numbers out of poverty. But a large number of people remain abjectly poor, among them almost half a billion people who are poor over long periods of time, their entire lives, and who may pass poverty to their children. The essential argument advanced in this report is that if these people are to escape poverty beyond 2015, they require additional policies and political commitment, underpinned by greater understanding and analysis, compared to what is currently practiced at global and national levels.