14. Is poverty actually decreasing

The dominating story about global development and globalisation is a very bright one. In this narrative extreme poverty has been halved and people everywhere are living better lives. But is this completely true? 

Here I summarise some important arguments from the book The Divide, by Jason Hickel.  There are other ways of measuring income poverty which makes the results look much worse. And are the positive trends really thanks to economic growth, "free trade" and globalisation? Where does poverty actually come from?