Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion: What if Three-quarters of the World's Poor Live in Middle-income Countries?
01 Nov 2010-Research Papers in Economics (Institute of Development Studies (UK))-Vol. 2010, Iss: 349, pp 01-43
TL;DR: The authors argued that the global poverty problem has changed because most of the world's poor no longer live in low-income countries (LICs) and pointed out that poverty was viewed as an LIC issue predominantly; nowadays such simplistic assumptions/classifications are misleading because some large countries that graduated into the MIC category still have large numbers of poor people.
Abstract: Summary
This paper argues that the global poverty problem has changed because most of the world's poor no longer live in low income countries (LICs). Previously, poverty was viewed as an LIC issue predominantly; nowadays such simplistic assumptions/classifications are misleading because some large countries that graduated into the MIC category still have large numbers of poor people. In 1990, we estimate 93 per cent of the world's poor lived in LICs; contrastingly in 2007–8 three quarters of the world's poor approximately 1.3bn lived in middle-income countries (MICs) and about a quarter of the world's poor, approximately 370mn people live in the remaining 39 low-income countries – largely in sub-Saharan Africa.
This startling change over two decades implies a new ‘bottom billion’ who do not live in fragile and conflict-affected states, but in stable, middle-income countries. Such global patterns are evident across monetary, nutritional and multi-dimensional poverty measures. This paper argues the general pattern is robust enough to warrant further investigation and discussion.
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Cites background from "Global Poverty and the New Bottom B..."
...For example, middle-income countries (including those with increasing economic power, such as China and India) are home to some 75% of the world’s poor (Summers 2010)....
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TL;DR: Although BV prevalence is, in general, highest in parts of Africa and lowest in much of Europe and Europe, some populations in Africa have very low BV prevalences and some in Asia and Europe have high rates.
Abstract: Bacterial vaginosis (BV) enhances the acquisition and transmission of a range of sexually transmitted infections including human immunodeficiency virus. This has made it more important to uncover the reasons why some populations have very high BV prevalences and others not. This systematic review describes the global epidemiology of BV. It summarizes data from peer-reviewed publications detailing the population prevalence of BV as diagnosed by a standardized and reproducible methodology-Nugent scoring system. BV variations between countries, and between ethnic groups within countries, are described. We evaluated 1692 English- and non-English-language articles describing the prevalence of BV using MEDLINE and the Web of Science databases. A total of 86 articles met our inclusion criteria. BV prevalences were found to vary considerably between ethnic groups in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Although BV prevalence is, in general, highest in parts of Africa and lowest in much of Asia and Europe, some populations in Africa have very low BV prevalences and some in Asia and Europe have high rates.
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01 Apr 2011
TL;DR: The bottom billion is defined by Collier and his colleagues as approximately one billion people living in the developing world as discussed by the authors, and the authors of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, are not mere opinions but rather empirically based conclusions that stem from his exhaustive list of peer-reviewed research.
Abstract: T he traditional view of global poverty assumes that there are one billion people living in rich countries with the remaining five billion residing in the developing world. And yet as the world becomes more globalized, many of the bottom five billion are beginning to climb the economic ladder and are escaping the generational cycle of poverty. Various countries, such as China and India, have seen unprecedented levels of economic growth coupled with rapidly declining poverty rates. But as these countries continue to grow, it becomes increasingly apparent that others are falling behind. Paul Collier, former research director for the World Bank and current director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, has spent his life working to alleviate global poverty. With more than thirty years of development experience, Collier is indeed in tune with the needs of the poor. More importantly, the arguments in his book, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, are not mere opinions but rather empirically based conclusions that stem from his exhaustive list of peer-reviewed research. In the first section, Collier declares that the real challenge of poverty elimination is that a group of countries are caught in a development trap and are consequently falling behind and falling apart. According to his definition, approximately one billion people—the bottom billion—are living in these countries. A closer analysis reveals that the economic growth of the bottom billion has actually declined since the 1970s. He believes that the reason they have not grown is because they have fallen into one or more of the following four traps: (1) conflict, (2) natural resources, (3) geography, and (4) poor governance. Although all societies have conflict, Collier’s first identified development trap is internal violence. Collier and his colleagues have identified three causes that lead to civil war: low initial levels of income, slow growth or stagnation, and dependence on natural resource commodities. The first two causes, low income and slow growth, lead to poverty and hopelessness. Consequently, many young men may join a rebel movement, preferring life as a solider with a small chance of riches to a life of despair with little or no opportunities to succeed. On average, a typical civil war in a developing country will last seven years. With the cost of war averaging US$64 billion annually, it becomes clear why patterns of war and violence can impede the economic growth of a country. Empirical research also shows that countries with high proportions of natural resource revenues tend to grow slower than other countries that have diversified exports. This “resource curse,” also known as Dutch disease, occurs when resource exports cause a country’s currency to rise in value against other currencies, thus making the country’s other export activities uncompetitive. Collier also proposes that resource revenues distort
279 citations
References
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TL;DR: It is a cause of rejoicing to be able to speak here today of World Health Statistics, not as one of the many desiderata still needed as a basis for a vigorous and wholesome international life, but as an accomplished fact.
Abstract: IT IS a cause of rejoicing to be able to speak here today of World Health Statistics, not as one of the many desiderata still needed as a basis for a vigorous and wholesome international life, but as an accomplished fact. When we are now primarily concerned with further extension, betterment of quality, and problems of comparability of world health statistics, our younger colleagues are apt to forget that the very creation of the system is of such a recent date that several of its pioneers are still with us. More than thirty years ago, while in the service of the Prudential Insurance Company of America, one of my daily tasks consisted of preparing ratings for extra life insurance premiums payable by Americans who were foolhardy enough to insist on travelling abroad. Our collection of mortality statistics and of information on health conditions in foreign countries was one of the very best existing at the time. Nevertheless, by far the most weighty ingredient of the brew was an arbitrary loading. Today there is a steady flow of valuable information from all parts of the world, and it is readily and promptly accessible to anyone who takes the trouble to ask for it. The history of health statistics as an international enterprise falls into three major periods. The first period, which lasted up to 1921, was characterized by private initiative. Then came the League of Nations period of a quarter of a century's duration. The third period, barely arising from our blueprints, is under the auspices of the United Nations and its specialized agencies, notably the World Health Organization. While inter-governmental organizations have taken the lead since 1921, private initiative is not dispensed with. Also, it should be remembered that no organization, however strategically placed, is better than the men who furnish the leadership and the daily work.
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"Global Poverty and the New Bottom B..." refers background in this paper
...Both sets of estimates were recently and contentiously revised (see Hogan et al. 2010; You et al. 2010)....
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...10 1 Klasen (2010), amongst others, has noted that these results likely overestimate poverty rates in China and India because they are driven in part by the recalculation of the 2005 PPP data....
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TL;DR: A new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world as discussed by the authors, finding that 25% of the population lived in poverty in 2005.
Abstract: A new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world We find that 25% of the population lived in poverty in 2005, as judged by what “poverty” typically means in the world's poorest countries This is higher than past estimates Substantial overall progress is still indicated—the corresponding poverty rate was 52% in 1981—but progress was very uneven across regions The trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology, though precise counts are more sensitive
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"Global Poverty and the New Bottom B..." refers background in this paper
...The World Bank’s most recent systematic estimate of global poverty is that by Chen and Ravallion (2008)....
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...Chen and Ravallion (2008) estimated that in 2005 1.38bn people lived below the new international poverty line of US$1.25/day and that this number fell by 400mn between 1990 and 2005 from 1.81bn in 1990....
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TL;DR: This article presented a new assessment of progress in reducing poverty over 1981-2001 using more consistent data and methods, closely following the methods underlying the Attacking Poverty (World Bank 2000) numbers, which had been based on Chen and Ravallion (2000).
Abstract: This article offers a new assessment of progress in reducing poverty over 1981–2001 using more consistent data and methods, closely following the methods underlying the Attacking Poverty (World Bank 2000) numbers, which had been based on Chen and Ravallion (2000). In common with our past estimates, the authors draw on nationally representative surveys as much as possible. The article reviews the methods of measuring poverty from those surveys and notes any changes from past estimates, though the authors refer readers to other sources for further discussion of our methods and alternatives. The new estimates presented here supersede all our previous estimates in that the authors recalculate everything back in time on a consistent basis incorporating the new data. The authors summarize our results in a standard regional tabulation following previous work. However, the authors have also created a Web-based interactive tool, PovcalNet, that allows users to access the primary distributions and so estimate poverty measures for alternative country groupings or for a selected set of individual countries (http:/ /iresearch.worldbank.org/povcalnet). The article first describes the coverage of the survey data. It then discusses the poverty line and exchange rates, followed by the measures of poverty, and then presents the main results.
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