IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/evoice/v15y2018i1p7n1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Unbearable Errorlessness of Global Poverty Estimates

Author

Listed:
  • Moatsos Michail

    (International Institute of Social History, 1019 AT Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Abstract

In October 2015 the World Bank initiated the Atkinson Commission on Global Poverty seeking advise on (1) keeping the international poverty line (iPL) constant in real terms, and (2) what else the Bank should make available to complement the dollar-a-day estimates. The Commission’s Report bears a set of 21 key recommendations, largely covering the most important voiced worries of the research community over the Bank’s methods and estimates. In response the Bank adopted fully and unconditionally only one–out of ten–recommendations regarding point one above, and three–out of nine–recommendations to the second point. In addition the Bank accepted one of the two overarching recommendations. Among the remaining 16 sidelined or partially accepted recommendations lies arguably the most obvious and important one: the urge that the Bank publishes the error terms of its estimates. Without them these estimates are supported by little else other than the administrative authority of the Bank.

Suggested Citation

  • Moatsos Michail, 2018. "The Unbearable Errorlessness of Global Poverty Estimates," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 1-7, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:evoice:v:15:y:2018:i:1:p:7:n:1
    DOI: 10.1515/ev-2018-0004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/ev-2018-0004
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/ev-2018-0004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    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. Moatsos, Michail, 2020. "The devil in the details: The core disadvantage of the International Poverty Line," EconStor Preprints 218971, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

    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. 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.
    2. Decerf,Benoit Marie A, 2022. "Absolute and Relative Poverty Measurement : A Survey," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10008, The World Bank.
    3. Robert C. Allen, 2017. "Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3690-3721, December.
    4. Martin Ravallion, 2016. "Toward better global poverty measures," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 227-248, June.
    5. Michail Moatsos, 2021. "Long run trails of poverty, 1925–2010," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(5), pages 2797-2825, November.
    6. 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.
    7. Moatsos, Michail, 2020. "Global Absolute Poverty: The Evolution of its Measurement," EconStor Preprints 216642, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    8. Moatsos, Michail, 2020. "The devil in the details: The core disadvantage of the International Poverty Line," EconStor Preprints 218971, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Shijiang Chen & Mingyue Liang & Wen Yang, 2022. "Does Digital Financial Inclusion Reduce China’s Rural Household Vulnerability to Poverty: An Empirical Analysis From the Perspective of Household Entrepreneurship," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, June.
    10. Bai, Yan & Costlow, Leah & Ebel, Alissa & Laves, Sarah & Ueda, Yurika & Volin, Natalie & Zamek, Maya & Herforth, Anna & Masters, William A., 2021. "Review: Retail consumer price data reveal gaps and opportunities to monitor food systems for nutrition," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    11. Leonardo Lucchetti & Andrés Castañeda & Santiago Garriga & Leonardo Gasparini & Daniel Valderrama, 2018. "How Sensitive Is Regional Poverty Measurement in Latin America to the Value of the Poverty Line?," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2018), pages 33-58, November.
    12. Gustafsson, Björn Anders & Sai, Ding, 2019. "Growing into Relative Income Poverty: Urban China 1988 to 2013," IZA Discussion Papers 12422, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 2021. "Reconciling the conflicting narratives on poverty in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    14. Manzoor Hussain Memon, 2023. "Poverty, Gap and Severity Estimates for Disaster Prone Rural Areas of Pakistan," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 645-663, April.
    15. Alkire, Sabina & Roche, José Manuel & Vaz, Ana, 2017. "Changes Over Time in Multidimensional Poverty: Methodology and Results for 34 Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 232-249.
    16. Benoit Decerf, 2021. "Combining absolute and relative poverty: income poverty measurement with two poverty lines," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(2), pages 325-362, February.
    17. Dean Jolliffe & Espen Beer Prydz, 2016. "Estimating international poverty lines from comparable national thresholds," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 185-198, June.
    18. Isaac K. Ofori & Mark K. Armah & Emmanuel E. Asmah, 2021. "Towards the Reversal of Poverty and Income Inequality Setbacks Due to COVID-19: The Role of Globalisation and Resource Allocation," Working Papers 21/043, European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS).
    19. María-Antonia Cuberos & Neida Albornoz-Arias & Carolina Ramírez-Martínez & Akever-Karina Santafé-Rojas, 2023. "Working Conditions of Venezuelan Immigrants in Cúcuta, Los Patios and La Parada (Colombia): Decent Work?," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-17, October.
    20. Gustavo A. Marrero & Juan Gabriel Rodríguez, 2019. "Inequality and growth: The cholesterol hypothesis," Working Papers 501, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    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:bpj:evoice:v:15:y:2018:i:1:p:7:n:1. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    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.