October 2018

It takes more than just money to escape poverty

Members of Wayuu community in the colombian region of Guajira. Jessica Belmont/WorldBank

The other day I asked my five-year-old daughter if she knew what being poor was. She hesitated at first but soon she was on a roll. She mentioned that being poor was not having enough to eat, not living in a “germ-free” house, and – my favorites – not having gummy bears or a blanket. All this within the first couple of minutes of possibly her first time ever thinking about what being poor meant. The idea of poverty is very intuitive – even for a five-year-old – but equally hard to put boundaries around. It is common to say that poverty doesn’t mean the same thing in different contexts or that it goes beyond monetary dimensions. But what do we mean by that?

We need to step up our efforts to end poverty in all of its dimensions

Each year on October. 17, we mark End Poverty Day at the World Bank Group to celebrate the progress we’ve made toward our twin goals: to end extreme poverty by 2030; and to boost shared prosperity among the poorest 40 percent around the world. But more importantly, we use this day to take stock of how much further we have to go.

Today, we released the latest Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report, which shows that we have never been closer to realizing those goals. The percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty has dropped from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015, the lowest it has ever been in recorded history. During that time, more than 1 billion people lifted themselves out of poverty. About half of the world’s countries have reduced extreme poverty below 3 percent – the target we set for the world to reach by 2030.

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Poverty

Afghanistan: Learning from a decade of progress and loss

Afghanistan: Learning from a decade of progress and loss

In Afghanistan, the past decade saw remarkable progress, as well as reversals and lost opportunities.

The overall macroeconomic and security context in Afghanistan since 2007 can be broken into two distinct phases, pre- and post- the 2014 security transition, when international troops handed over security responsibilities to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).

The pre-transition phase was marked by higher economic growth (GDP per capita grew 63 percent relative to its 2007 value) and a relatively stable security situation.

Since 2014, growth has stagnated, falling below rates of population growth, and the security situation continues to deteriorate. With the withdrawal of most international troops and the steady decline in aid (both security and civilian aid) since 2012, the economy witnessed an enormous shock to demand, from which it is still struggling to recover.

Similarly, welfare can be characterized into two distinct phases.

Finishing the job of ending poverty in South Asia

This Bangladeshi woman was born in poverty. With the right kind of education, life in poverty quickly became a story from the past for her. Credit: World Bank

"I have a four-year-old son back in my village. I want to make a better life for him,” says Sharmin Akhtar, a 19-year-old employee in one of Dhaka’s many flourishing garment factories.

Like thousands of other poor women, Sharmin came down to Bangladesh’s capital from her village in the country’s north to seek a better job and create a more prosperous future for her family—leaving behind a life of crushing poverty.

Today, as we mark End Poverty Day 2018, it’s important to note that Sharmin’s heartening story is one of many in Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia, where economic growth has spurred a dramatic decline in extreme poverty in the last 25 years.

And the numbers are striking: In South Asia, the number of extreme poor living on less than $1.90 a day dropped to 216 million people in 2015 from 275 million in 2013 and 536 million in 1990.

Even more remarkable, South Asian countries experienced an increase in incomes among the poorest 40 percent of 2.6 percent a year between 2010-2015, faster than the global average of 1.9 percent.

On a global scale, the highest concentration of poor shifted from South Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa in 2012. And India is likely to be overtaken, if it has not already been, by Nigeria as the country with the most people living in extreme poverty.

It’s worth thinking about how far South Asia has come – but remaining clear-eyed about how far we must go to finish the fight against extreme poverty.

Indeed, it is increasingly clear that poverty is more entrenched and harder to root out in certain areas, particularly in rural areas and in countries burdened by violent conflict and weak institutions.

Estimates for 2015 indicate that India, with 176 million poor people, continued to have the highest number of people in poverty and accounted for nearly a quarter of the global poor.

True, the extreme poverty rate is significantly lower in India relative to the average rate in Sub-Saharan Africa. But because of its large population, India’s total number of poor is still large.

And while there has been a substantial decline in the numbers and rate of people living below $1.90 in South Asia, the number of people living on less than $3.20 has declined by only 8 percent over 1990-2015 because of the growing population.

In 2015, 49 percent of the population of South Asia were living on less than $3.20 a day, and 80 percent were living on less than $5.50 a day.

Some advice from survey implementers: Part 1

I have often wondered what the folks who do the surveys I use in my research think of how it is to work with me. Since I wasn’t sure I had the courage to hear that straight to my face, I wrote to a number of survey folks I knew (and thought highly of) or that other people recommended. I asked them what they would tell researchers in general.

Why the World Bank is adding new ways to measure poverty

The 2018 Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report shows how poverty is changing and introduces improved ways to monitor our progress toward ending it.

The landscape of extreme poverty is now split in two. While most of the world has seen extreme poverty fall to below 3 percent of the population, Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing extreme poverty rates affecting more than 40 percent of people. The lamentable distinction of being home to the most people living in extreme poverty has shifted, or will soon shift, from India to Nigeria, symbolizing the increased concentration of poverty in Africa.

What’s behind the slowing pace of poverty reduction in Tajikistan?

Tajikistan achieved high rates of economic growth during the 2000s (about 8% per year, on average), which doubled GDP per capita and helped reduce poverty by almost half between 1999 and 2009. But over the following decade, the rate of poverty reduction began to slow – between 2012 and 2017, poverty fell by about 7.5 percentage points.

While employment and growing income levels continued to slowly drive poverty reduction, a fall in the value of remittances in 2014 began weighing on the country’s performance. Since then, the poverty rate has fallen by about just 1 percentage point per year.

So, despite continued growth, why has the pace of poverty reduction slowed in Tajikistan?

Incomes of the poorest are growing in 3 of every 4 economies

In much of the world today, the incomes of the poor are growing. The World Bank calls this concept shared prosperity, defined as the average annual growth in income or consumption of the poorest 40 percent (the bottom 40) within each country. So, if shared prosperity in a country is positive, the poor are getting richer.

In addition, the shared prosperity premium is defined as the difference between the annual income or consumption growth rate of the bottom 40 and the annual growth rate of the mean in the economy. A positive premium indicates that the bottom 40 are getting a larger share of overall income in the economy.

In Africa, technology and human capital go hand in hand

Rwanda’s progress from the devastating civil war two decades ago to one of the most rapidly developing African countries is a remarkable narrative on development.

Twenty-four years ago, the country was torn apart by civil war and one of the worst genocides human history has known; one in which more than a million people were killed in only three months.

Now, with years of sustained economic growth—predicted to be around 6.5% this year, the country is well on the way to achieving many of the ambitious development goals set out in the Rwandan Government’s ‘Vision 2020.’ This strategy seeks to move away from agriculture and rely instead on services and knowledge as the new engines of economic growth, with the objective of achieving middle-income status in the near term.

I had the privilege of getting a snapshot view of Rwanda’s success during the few days I spent in the country last month attending elearning Africa 2018, the continent’s largest conference on technology-assisted learning and training. The choice of Kigali as the location for this year’s conference is highly symbolic: Rwanda has put education and skills at the heart of its national strategy, and can send a powerful message to other African countries about the importance of investing in human capital to support overall development.

Accelerating progress towards human capital and financial inclusion

Last week, more than 11,000 delegates from the World Bank Group’s member countries –public and private sector attendees--gathered at our Annual Meetings in Indonesia to discuss how we can accelerate progress toward our twin goals: to end extreme poverty by 2030 and boost shared prosperity among the poorest 40 percent around the world.

Disruptive technologies create opportunities for development but they also put those goals at risk. Our discussion this past week focused on the changing the nature of work – the topic of our World Development Report this year. While technology and automation are doing away with some jobs, innovation is also creating new occupations, and launching career fields that didn’t exist a few years ago. Those who are prepared for this future will have many opportunities to achieve their aspirations. Those who are not will be left behind.

October 2018

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