Current work

Research interests

For decades, the world has become accustomed to significant reductions in the share of people living in extreme poverty. Driven by a remarkable improvement in living conditions amongst people in China and India, the number of people living below the International Poverty Line of 3 USD a day decreased from 2.3 billion in 1990 to 840 million in 2019. Since then, the number has stalled, with 831 million people still living in extreme poverty in 2025.

My professional career and research interest is centered on these individuals. Finding out what works where and why was a key element in my PhD dissertation. Making policy and practice come together was the overarching theme of my years working with Danish development assistance. And currently, I'm trying to bridge the gap between research and policy related to extreme poverty and global inequality.

Work in progress

Measuring Global Inequality: How accounting for inequality within the household affects the global profile. Joint work with Dean Jolliffe, Christoph Lakner and Samuel Tetteh-Baah.

Popular dissemination

Various blog posts at the World Bank.

Microfinance and microcredit (in Danish). Lecture on DR2. Aired November 22nd, 2012.

Ph.D. in three minutes (In Danish). Aired on DR2 September 5, 2012.

Microfinance - debt trap or the path to development (in Danish) feature in Kristeligt Dagblad.