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The developing world is poorer than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty

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Author Info
Chen, Shaohua
Ravallion, Martin

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Abstract

The paper presents a major overhaul to the World Bank's past estimates of global poverty, incorporating new and better data. Extreme poverty-as judged by what"poverty"means in the world's poorest countries-is found to be more pervasive than we thought. Yet the data also provide robust evidence of continually declining poverty incidence and depth since the early 1980s. For 2005 we estimate that 1.4 billion people, or one quarter of the population of the developing world, lived below our international line of $1.25 a day in 2005 prices; 25 years earlier there were 1.9 billion poor, or one half of the population. Progress was uneven across regions. The poverty rate in East Asia fell from almost 80 percent to under 20 percent over this period. By contrast it stayed at around 50 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, though with signs of progress since the mid 1990s. Because of lags in survey data availability, these estimates do not yet reflect the sharp rise in food prices since 2005.

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Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 4703.

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Date of creation: 01 Aug 2008
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4703

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Related research
Keywords: Rural Poverty Reduction; Population Policies; Achieving Shared Growth; Services&Transfers to Poor;

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This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 2008. "China is poorer than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4621, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  2. Ravallion, Martin & Datt, Gaurav & van de Walle, Dominique, 1991. "Quantifying Absolute Poverty in the Developing World," Review of Income and Wealth, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(4), pages 345-61, December.
  3. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 2007. "Absolute poverty measures for the developing world, 1981-2004," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4211, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  4. Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2006. "The World Distribution of Income: Falling Poverty and ... Convergence, Period," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 121(2), pages 351-397, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Summers, Robert & Heston, Alan, 1991. "The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950-1988," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 106(2), pages 327-68, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 1-19, 04. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will, 2008. "Implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low-income countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4594, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  8. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua & Sangraula, Prem, 2007. "New evidence on the urbanization of global poverty," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4199, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  9. Bela Balassa, 1964. "The Purchasing-Power Parity Doctrine: A Reappraisal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72, pages 584. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Anton Korinek & Johan Mistiaen & Martin Ravallion, 2006. "Survey nonresponse and the distribution of income," Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 33-55, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 2004. "How Have the World's Poorest Fared Since the Early 1980s?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3341, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Deaton, A. & Zaidi, S., 1999. "Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates for Welfare Analysis," Papers 192, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Development Studies.
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  13. Lanjouw, Peter & Ravallion, Martin, 1995. "Poverty and Household Size," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(433), pages 1415-34, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Ruoen, Ren & Chen Kai, 1995. "China's GDP in U.S. dollars based on purchasing power parity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1415, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  15. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2007. "China's (uneven) progress against poverty," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 1-42, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 1996. "Data in transition: Assessing rural living standards in Southern China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 23-56. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Sanjay Reddy, 2009. "The Emperor's New Suit: Global Poverty Estimates Reappraised," SCEPA Working Papers 2009-11, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School. [Downloadable!]
  2. Katsushi Imai & Raghav Gaiha & Ganesh Thapa, 2009. "Has Poverty Reduction Slowed Down in the Developing World? Evidence Based on New Poverty Estimates," The School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 0902, Economics, The University of Manchester. [Downloadable!]
  3. Prakash, Nishith & Chin, Aimee, 2009. "The Redistributive Effects of Political Reservation for Minorities: Evidence from India," MPRA Paper 13571, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  4. Xiaofei Tian & Baotai Wang & Ajit Dayanandan, 2008. "The Impact of Economic Globalization on Income Distribution: Empirical Evidence in China," Economics Bulletin, Economics Bulletin, vol. 4(35), pages 1-8. [Downloadable!]
  5. Naude, Wim, 2009. "The Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Developing Countries," Working Papers UNU-WIDER Research Paper , World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). [Downloadable!]
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