A world without extreme poverty is still some way off, but there have been moments where some actual poverty reduction occurred. ‘Whither poverty?’ considers three of the post-1960 attempts to place poverty reduction on the public agenda: President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 War on Poverty, the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals set out in 2000, and their Sustainable Development Goals outlined in 2015. It concludes that the goal of action against poverty is the creation of a world where every individual’s opportunity to thrive (not just survive) can be independent of the circumstances of their birth, if they choose. Poverty matters because it is an obstacle to our progress, properly defined.