The Strange and Curious Grip of Country Income Status on Otherwise Smart and Decent People
4/23/14
A set of more or less arbitrary lines continues to do very strange things to discussions about development.
Tag: Poverty
Beyond the Headlines: 3 Under-Reported Stories about Nigeria’s 90% GDP Boost
4/8/14
While I was plowing through Morten Jerven’s enlightening book Poor Numbers last year, my mind concentrated on Nigeria. It stayed with Nigeria. At that time, I was consumed with figuring out what on earth was going on with Nigeria’s poverty figures. How was it possible for the country to experience growth in both its GDP and extreme poverty rates at the same time?
Where Is Life Better…?
2/14/14
Last week, we sat down with Lawrence to record a Wonkcast on our new working paper The Median is the Message: A Good-Enough Measure of Material Well-Being and Shared Development Progress. In the paper, we argue that survey-based median household consumption expenditure (or income) per capita should be incorporated into standard development indicators, as a simple, robust, and durable indicator of typical individual material well-being in a country.
Median Income as a Better Measure of Development Progress—Nancy Birdsall and Christian Meyer
2/10/14
Development progress has traditionally been measured in terms of reductions in poverty and increases in per capita GDP, that is, average income as calculated by dividing total income by the total population. My guests on this week’s Global Prosperity Wonkcast, Nancy Birdsall and Christian Meyer, argue that median income—the income at the middle of a country’s income distribution—is a better measure.
Why Ending Poverty Requires Ending Everyday Violence Against the Poor
1/29/14
When middle class households opt out en masse of public schools — as in India and Brazil and the inner cities of USA— it’s bad news for the children of the poor majority. That’s now a familiar and important argument for radical new thinking about school systems. But it’s even worse for poor people when the middle class and rich give up on basic public security, protecting themselves instead with private guards, gated communities and bullet-proof cars.
Why Solar Lamps Are the Cash Transfers of Energy Poverty
1/3/14
I’m a pretty big fan of cash transfers. I’ve become convinced that cash is an efficient immediate way to help the poor and very often a better alternative than other standard development interventions like training or building schools.
Shah on Eradicating Extreme Poverty
11/25/13
USAID Administrator Shah’s speech at Brookings this week set forth his vision for why eradicating extreme poverty is achievable over the next two decades.
Where Are the Poor? Where Is Aid Going?
11/20/13
What will it take to end extreme poverty by 2030? That is the goal President Obama included in his SOTU in 2013, President Kim recently announced as the World Bank's key objective, and that USAID Administrator Raj Shah will discuss Thursday in a much-anticipated speech at the Brookings Institution.
Post-2015: A $1 Trillion Financing Package?
11/20/13
A $1 trillion financing partnership to support ending extreme poverty, stopping avoidable child deaths, and meeting other widely supported post-2015 development goals sounds far-fetched. But improbable action is what will be needed if we’re going to come close to making such historically unprecedented progress. Indeed, delivering on proposed zero goals is going to take a broad and deep global partnership that’s about far more than aid.
The Median as a Better Measure of Development – and Better Than the World Bank’s Shared Prosperity
11/6/13
Last month I spoke at the annual Global Empowerment Meeting organized by Harvard’s Center for International Development, which brings together development wonks, entrepreneurs, and international policy leaders.