World Development Indicators 2008 : Poverty Data
This supplement to World Development Indicators 2008 provides estimates of global poverty that are the first re-evaluation of the World Bank's "$1 a day" poverty line since 1999. The international poverty line has been recalibrated a...
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Format: | Data |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
Washington, DC
2017
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/164111468177567650/Poverty-data-a-supplement-to-World-development-indicators-2008 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28241 |
Summary: | This supplement to World Development
Indicators 2008 provides estimates of global poverty that
are the first re-evaluation of the World Bank's
"$1 a day" poverty line since 1999. The
international poverty line has been recalibrated at $1.25 a
day, using new data on purchasing power parities (PPPs),
compiled by the International Comparison Program, and an
expanded set of household income and expenditure surveys.
New measurements of the extent and depth of poverty are
presented here for 115 developing countries, along with
poverty measurements based on their national poverty lines.
The new data change our view of poverty in the world. There
are more poor people, extremely poor people, and the
incidence of poverty reaches farther into middle-income
countries. Previous rounds of the International Comparison
Program underestimated average price levels in developing
countries (perhaps by not fully adjusting for quality
differences) and thus overestimated standards of living. By
the new measurements 1.4 billion people are living in
extreme poverty, more than one-quarter of the population of
developing countries. But countries and regions that have
reduced their poverty rates are no less successful by the
new measurements. In 1990, at the beginning of the period
tracked by the Millennium Development Goals, 42 percent of
the people in developing countries lived on less than $1.25
a day. Over 15 years global poverty fell by an average of 1
percentage point a year. At that rate the target set by the
Millennium Development Goals will be surpassed at the global
level and in East Asia, where poverty rates have fallen
fastest, by 2015. But large differences remain between
regions, across countries in the same region, and even
within countries. The data presented here allow us to see
where some of those differences occur and point the way
toward a world free from the most extreme poverty. |
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