The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) is a new economic research centre within the Department of International Development at Oxford University. Led by Sabina Alkire, OPHI advances the human development approach to poverty reduction by fundamental, sustained, and multidisciplinary research that is effectively disseminated. The overall aim is to build and advance a more systematic methodological and economic framework to underlie multidimensional poverty reduction. OPHI’s vision is a world in which decision makers are able to advance people’s capabilities and freedoms, in part because user-friendly research and policy advice is readily available.
Creating coherent and effective methods to reduce multidimensional poverty and promote human freedoms is a political and moral imperative in this generation. OPHI’s research draws from the writings of leading authors in human development and poverty reduction such as Amartya Sen, Tony Atkinson, and Frances Stewart, together with other research in economics and the social sciences, with the aim of providing a coherent framework for normative policy advice.