The article discusses how the World Bank linked the debate and practices of economic development to the idea of poverty. For this, analyzes the history of the institution taking into account the international political economy in which operated and its interface with the economic thinking. Besides, it explains when and how emerged the "assault on extreme poverty" policy, which instruments the Bank used to take it forward, which arguments that gave him support and which limits it faced in the 1970s. It's argued that this policy was resumed and adapted in the late 1980s in the wake of structural adjustment programs, culminating in the consolidation of a new social policy model over the years 1990, attuned to economic liberalization and based on the measurement of poverty and provision of social minimum. After the September 11, 2001, the World Bank has combined economic liberalization and combating poverty to the war on terrorism and the construction and reconstruction of states.
