IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/une/wpaper/79.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Emperor’s New Suit: Global Poverty Estimates Reappraised

Author

Listed:
  • Sanjay G. Reddy

Abstract

The recent revision of the World Bank’s global poverty estimates based on a new $1.25 (2005 PPP) poverty line underlines their unreliability and lack of meaningfulness. It is very difficult to justify various aspects of the Bank’s approach. In the short term, less weight should be given to the Bank’s poverty estimates in monitoring the first MDG. In the longer term, a solution to the observed problems requires adopting an altogether different method. Such an alternative exists but requires global institutional coordination. Until it is implemented, the crisis in the monitoring of global consumption poverty can be expected to intensify. Subsequent versions of this paper, correcting errors or extending the argument, will be made available on socialanalysis.org

Suggested Citation

  • Sanjay G. Reddy, 2009. "The Emperor’s New Suit: Global Poverty Estimates Reappraised," Working Papers 79, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    • Handle: RePEc:une:wpaper:79
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2009/wp79_2009.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anand, Sudhir & Kanbur, S. M. Ravi, 1991. "International poverty projections," Policy Research Working Paper Series 617, The World Bank.
    2. Ahluwalia, Montek S. & Carter, Nicholas G. & Chenery, Hollis B., 1979. "Growth and poverty in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 299-341, August.
    3. Shaohua Chien & Martin Ravallion, 2001. "How did the world's poorest fare in the 1990s?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 47(3), pages 283-300, September.
    4. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 2003. "Halving Global Poverty," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 3-22, Summer.
    5. Carlson, Andrea & Lino, Mark & Juan, WenYen & Hanson, Kenneth & Basiotis, P. Peter, 2007. "Thrifty Food Plan, 2006," CNPP Reports 42899, United States Department of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Khalid Abu-Ismail & Niranjan Sarang, 2015. "Rethinking the measurement of the middle class: Evidence from Egypt," WIDER Working Paper Series 023, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Khan Shahrukh Rafi, 2011. "Growth Diagnostics: The Puzzle of Pakistan's Lagging Economic Growth," Global Economy Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 11(4), pages 1-19, December.
    3. Sanjay G. Reddy, 2012. "Towards the Arab Renaissance," Policy Research Brief 18, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    4. Khalid Abu-Ismail & Niranjan Sarang, 2015. "Rethinking the Measurement of the Middle Class: Evidence from Egypt," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-023, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Facundo Alvaredo & Leonardo Gasparini, 2013. "Recent Trends in Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0151, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    2. Robert C. Allen, 2017. "Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3690-3721, December.
    3. Kalwij, Adriaan & Verschoor, Arjan, 2007. "Not by growth alone: The role of the distribution of income in regional diversity in poverty reduction," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 805-829, May.
    4. Grabiella Berloffa & Maria Luigia Segnana, 2004. "Trade, inequality and pro-poor growth: Two perspectives, one message?," Department of Economics Working Papers 0408, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    5. Moatsos Michail, 2016. "Global Absolute Poverty: Behind the Veil of Dollars," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-28, December.
    6. Katsushi Imai & Raghav Gaiha & University of Delhi, 2003. "Millennium Development Goals, Agricultural Growth and Openness," Economics Series Working Papers 161, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Shaohua Chen & Andrew Dabalen & Yuri Dikhanov & Nada Hamadeh & Dean Jolliffe & Ambar Narayan & Espen Beer Prydz & Ana Revenga & Prem Sangraula & Umar Serajuddin & Nobuo Yosh, 2016. "A global count of the extreme poor in 2012: data issues, methodology and initial results," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 141-172, June.
    8. Dhongde, Shatakshee & Minoiu, Camelia, 2013. "Global Poverty Estimates: A Sensitivity Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-13.
    9. Pinkovskiy, Maxim L., 2013. "World welfare is rising: Estimation using nonparametric bounds on welfare measures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 176-195.
    10. Edward, Peter & Sumner, Andy, 2014. "Estimating the Scale and Geography of Global Poverty Now and in the Future: How Much Difference Do Method and Assumptions Make?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 67-82.
    11. Robert C. Allen, 2017. "Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire REVISED," Working Papers 20170005, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised Jun 2017.
    12. E. Santarelli & P. Figini, 2002. "Does Globalization Reduce Poverty? Some Empirical Evidence for the Developing Countries," Working Papers 459, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    13. Birdsall, Nancy & Lustig, Nora & Meyer, Christian J., 2014. "The Strugglers: The New Poor in Latin America?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 132-146.
    14. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg & Nina Pavcnik, 2007. "The Effects of the Colombian Trade Liberalization on Urban Poverty," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization and Poverty, pages 241-290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Azariadis, Costas & Stachurski, John, 2005. "Poverty Traps," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, Elsevier.
    16. Singh, Ajit & Singh, Gurmail, 2013. "Almost Steady East Asian Rise: Implications for Labour Markets and Income Distribution," MPRA Paper 53028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Dec 2013.
    17. Vinod Thomas, 2009. "Income Disparity and Growth," Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, Emerging Markets Forum, vol. 1(1), pages 63-86, January.
    18. Smith, Peter, 2008. "New perspectives on realism, tractability, and complexity in economics," MPRA Paper 10899, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Jo Thori Lind & Karl Moene, 2011. "Miserly Developments," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(9), pages 1332-1352, June.
    20. Dalgaard, Carl-Johan & Erickson, Lennart, 2009. "Reasonable Expectations and the First Millennium Development Goal: How Much Can Aid Achieve?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 1170-1181, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Millennium Development Goals; poverty; purchasing power parities (PPPs); world poverty;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • C80 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:une:wpaper:79. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Aimee Gao (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desunus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.