Who is Not Poor? Dreaming of a World Truly Free of Poverty

Who is Not Poor? Dreaming of a World Truly Free of Poverty

When the World Bank dreams of 'a world free of poverty,' what should it be dreaming? In measuring global income or consumption expenditure poverty, the World Bank has widely adopted the $1 a day standard as a lower bound. Because this sta...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Pritchett, Lant
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English en_US
Published:	Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2013
Subjects:	ABSOLUTE POVERTY ABSOLUTE POVERTY LINE ABSOLUTE TERMS AVERAGE INCOMES CHILD MORTALITY CONSUMPTION BASKET CONSUMPTION EXPENDITURE CONSUMPTION EXPENDITURES DEFINITIONS OF POVERTY DEVELOPING WORLD DEVELOPMENT GOALS DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS DEVELOPMENT POLICY DEVELOPMENT REPORT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ECONOMIC GROWTH ECONOMIC STUDIES ECONOMICS EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE EXTREME POVERTY FOOD BASKET FOOD POVERTY FOOD POVERTY LINE FOOD SHARE GLOBAL LEVEL GLOBAL MARKETS GLOBAL POVERTY GROWTH PRO-POOR GROWTH RATES HEADCOUNT POVERTY HEALTH CARE HIGH GROWTH HIGH POVERTY HOUSEHOLD SIZE HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS HOUSING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX INCOME INCOME DISTRIBUTION INCOME DISTRIBUTIONS INCOME GAINS INCOME INEQUALITY INCOME POVERTY INEQUALITY INFANT MORTALITY INFANT MORTALITY RATE INFANT MORTALITY RATES INFORMAL ECONOMY LIVING STANDARDS LOG NORMAL MALNUTRITION MEAN INCOME MEAN INCOMES MEAT NATIONAL POVERTY NATIONAL POVERTY LINE NATIONAL POVERTY LINES PER CAPITA INCOME POLICY ANALYSIS POLICY DEBATE POLICY OBJECTIVE POLICY RESEARCH POLITICAL ECONOMY POOR POOR COUNTRIES POOR PEOPLE POVERTY COMPARISONS POVERTY DEBATE POVERTY GAP POVERTY LINE POVERTY LINES POVERTY MEASURE POVERTY MEASURES POVERTY PROFILE POVERTY RATE POVERTY RATES POVERTY REDUCTION PRO-POOR PUBLIC POLICY REDUCED POVERTY REGIONAL AGGREGATES REGIONAL POVERTY RICH COUNTRIES RURAL RURAL AREAS SCHOOLING SQUARED POVERTY GAP STANDARD DEVIATION TARGETED TRANSFERS UNEMPLOYMENT VEGETABLES WORLD INCOME DISTRIBUTION
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2006/01/17591329/not-poor-dreaming-world-truly-free-poverty http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16399

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Summary:	When the World Bank dreams of 'a world free of poverty,' what should it be dreaming? In measuring global income or consumption expenditure poverty, the World Bank has widely adopted the $1 a day standard as a lower bound. Because this standard is based on poverty lines in the poorest countries, anyone with income or expenditures below this line will truly be poor. But there is no consensus standard for the upper bound of the global poverty line: above what level of income or expenditures is someone truly not poor? This article proposes that the World Bank compute its lower and upper bounds in a methodologically equivalent way, using the poverty lines of the poorest countries for the lower bound and the poverty lines of the richest countries for the upper bound. The resulting upper bound global poverty line will be 10 times higher than the current lower bound and at least 5 times higher than the currently used alternative lower bound of $2 a day. And in tracking progress toward a world free of poverty, the World Bank should compute measures of global poverty using a variety of weights on the depth and intensity of poverty for a range of poverty lines between the global lower and upper bounds. For instance, rather than trying to artificially force the global population of 6.2 billion (a billion is 1,000 million) into just two categories 'poor' and 'not poor,' with the new range of poverty lines the estimates would be that 1.3 billion people are 'destitute' (below $1 a day), another 1.6 billion are in 'extreme poverty' (above $1 a day but below $2 dollar a day), and another 2.5 billion are in 'global poverty' (above extreme poverty but below the upper bound poverty line).

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