Boosting convergence and shared prosperity in the European Union achieved renewed urgency after the global financial crisis of 2008. This paper assesses the role of agriculture and the Common Agricultural Program in achieving this.

The 2015 Millennium Development Goal to reduce by 50 percent the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty was met early. The number of individuals in developing countries who live in extreme poverty had decreased from 43 percent in 1990 to 21 percent by 2010.