According to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), poverty eradication in the 21st century means everyday access to decent health care, education and livelihoods, political participation, social inclusion, a clean and safe environment, and more. These are aspirational goals that together support a decent quality of life. Crossing monetary, ‘poverty thresholds’ may enable such goals. Most estimates of ‘where’ the monetary threshold lies derive the estimates circularly from monetary costs of living. The link to quality of living is thereby made by fiat, untested empirically in everyday human experience. We already know we can measure income independently of middle class quality of life, and probe for relationships between the two. Why not for poverty too? A quantity of money where quality of life changed would mark a genuine threshold required for example to escape from poverty traps. Using this approach, studies in quality of work–life, using multiple indicators, have identified at least three thresholds where quality of life ticked markedly upwards, including inter-threshold ranges where gradients went from zero to positive. The concept of work–life balance suggests that this approach may be usefully extended to include quality health care, education, and other SDGs in sustainability science.

根据联合国可持续发展目标 (SDG)，21 世纪消除贫困意味着每天都能获得体面的医疗保健、教育和生计、政治参与、社会包容、清洁和安全的环境等等。这些是共同支持体面生活质量的理想目标。跨越货币“贫困门槛”可能会实现这些目标。大多数对货币门槛“在哪里”的估计都是从生活的货币成本中循环得出的。因此，与生活质量的联系是由法令建立的，未经人类日常经验的经验检验。我们已经知道我们可以独立于中产阶级的生活质量来衡量收入，并探索两者之间的关系。为什么不也是为了贫困？改变生活质量的货币数量将标志着摆脱贫困陷阱所需的真正门槛。使用这种方法，使用多个指标的工作生活质量研究确定了至少三个生活质量显着上升的阈值，包括阈值间梯度从零到正的范围。工作与生活平衡的概念表明，这种方法可以有效地扩展到包括可持续发展科学中的优质医疗保健、教育和其他可持续发展目标。