Benchmarking Global Poverty Reduction
Against what standards should we judge the developing world's overall performance against poverty going forward? The paper proposes two measures, each with both "optimistic" and "ambitious" targets for 2022, 10 years from t...
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Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
2013
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Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/09/16878201/benchmarking-global-poverty-reduction http://hdl.handle.net/10986/12095 |
Summary: | Against what standards should we judge
the developing world's overall performance against
poverty going forward? The paper proposes two measures, each
with both "optimistic" and "ambitious"
targets for 2022, 10 years from the time of writing. The
first measure is absolute consumption poverty, as judged by
what "poverty" means in the poorest countries. The
second is a new measure of global poverty combining absolute
poverty with country-specific social inclusion needs,
consistently with national poverty lines. The optimistic
benchmark would entail an absolute poverty rate of 9 percent
in 2022, and a combined poverty rate of 40 percent,
including the allowance for social inclusion. The more
ambitious targets would bring the absolute rate down to 3
percent and the combined rate to 33 percent. The optimistic
target would maintain the (impressive) progress against
poverty of the last 20 years, without global crises to stall
that progress. The ambitious target would require about a 1
percentage point higher growth rate for the gross domestic
product of the developing world, as long as this did not
come with a reduction in the household sector's share
or any further increase in overall inequality beyond its
level in 2008. Alternatively, the 3 percent target could be
reached at currently expected growth rates but at the lower
level of inequality found in 1999. |
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