Jeffrey Sachs is an economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He has researched the causes of extreme poverty, which he defines as living on less than $1 per day. Sachs estimates that over 8 million people die from extreme poverty each year due to lack of access to basic needs. However, he argues proven interventions that target specific issues, like providing bed nets or boosting agriculture, could alleviate extreme poverty at an estimated cost of $32 billion per year. Sachs has implemented the Millennium Village Project in Africa to test this approach.