Are Estimates of Poverty in Latin America Reliable?

Are Estimates of Poverty in Latin America Reliable?

The Emperor’s New Suit: Global Poverty Estimates Reappraised

The recent revision of the World Bank’s global poverty estimates based on a new $1.25 (2005 PPP) poverty line underlines their unreliability and lack of meaningfulness. It is very difficult to justify various aspects of the Bank’s approach. In the short term, less weight should be given to the Bank’s poverty estimates in monitoring the first MDG. In the longer term, a solution to the observed problems requires adopting an altogether different method. Such an alternative exists but requires global institutional coordination. Until it is implemented, the crisis in the monitoring of global consumption poverty can be expected to intensify. Subsequent versions of this paper, correcting errors or extending the argument, will be made available on socialanalysis.orgMillennium Development Goals, poverty, purchasing power parities (PPPs), world poverty

The New Global Poverty Estimates ? Digging Deeper into a Hole

Recently, the World Bank released ?updated? global poverty estimates. These new numbers are based on a new price survey and a new benchmark international poverty line of $1.25 in 2005 purchasing power parities (PPPs). The new figures purport to describe world poverty since 1981, and thus affect our understanding of the world over the last quarter century of globalization. (...)The New Global Poverty Estimates ? Digging Deeper into a Hole

Development Aid and Economic Growth: A Positive Long-Run Relation

We analyze the growth impact of official development assistance to developing countries. Our approach is different from that of previous studies in two major ways. First, we disentangle the effects of two components of aid: a developmental, growth-enhancing component, and a geopolitical, possibly growth-depressing component. Second, our specifications allow for the effect of aid on economic growth to occur over long time-lags. Our results indicate that developmental aid promotes long-run growth. The effect is large and robustly significant, and withstands an array of robustness checks including alternative specifications, choices of the proxy for development aid, and treatments of outliers.official development assistance, economic growth

Real Income Stagnation of Countries, 1960-2001

We examine the phenomenon of real-income stagnation in a large cross-section of countries during the last four decades. Stagnation is defined as negligible or negative growth extending over a number of years. We find that stagnation has affected more than three fifths of countries (103 out of 168). Stagnating countries were more likely to have been poor, in Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa, conflict ridden and dependent on primary commodity exports. Stagnation is recurrent: countries that were stagnators in the 1960s had a likelihood of 75 percent of having been stagnators in the 1990s.real income stagnation, patterns of economic growth

Has world poverty really fallen during the 1990s?

We evaluate the claim that world consumption poverty has fallen during the 1990s in light of alternative assumptions about the extent of initial poverty and the rate of subsequent poverty reduction in China, India, and the rest of the developing world. We assess the extent of poverty using two indicators: the aggregate poverty headcount and the poverty headcount ratio, and consider two international poverty lines that are widely used ($1.08/day and$2.15/day 1993 PPP). We find that under some of the assumptions considered, world poverty has risen. We conclude that, because of uncertainties in relation to the extent and trend of poverty in China, India, and the rest of the developing world, world poverty may or may not have increased. The extent of the increase or decrease in world poverty is critically dependent on the assumptions made. Our conclusions suggest the importance of improving the quality of global poverty statistics.world poverty, sensitivity analysis, China, India

Chinese Poverty: Assessing the Impact of Alternative Assumptions

This Working Paper investigates how estimates of the extent and trend of consumption poverty in China between 1990 and 2001 vary as a result of alternative plausible assumptions concerning the poverty line and estimated levels of consumption. The exercise is motivated by the existence of considerable uncertainty about the appropriate poverty lines to apply and the level and distribution of resources in China. Our methodology focuses on the following sources of variation: alternative purchasing power parity conversion factors (used to convert an international poverty line), alternative estimates of the level and distribution of private incomes, alternative estimates of the propensity to consume of lower income groups, and alternative consumer price indices. It is widely believed that substantial poverty reduction took place in China in the 1990s, and we find this conclusion to be robust to the choice of assumptions. Moreover, there is no evidence that the rate of poverty reduction declined over time. China?s record of reducing consumption poverty has been dramatic. However, estimates of the extent of Chinese poverty in any year are greatly influenced by the assumptions made. The choice among these estimates is likely to have large implications for the perceived extent and trend of world poverty.Consumption poverty, China, Sensitivity analysis

Growth of shocked gaseous interfaces in a conical geometry

The results of experiments on Richtmyer-Meshkov instability growth of multimode initial perturbations on an air-sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) interface in a conical geometry are presented. The experiments are done in a relatively larger shock tube. A nominally planar interface is formed by sandwiching a polymeric membrane between wire-mesh frames. A single incident shock wave ruptures the membrane resulting in multimode perturbations. The instability develops from the action of baroclinically deposited vorticity at the interface. The visual thickness delta of the interface is measured from schlieren photographs obtained in each run. Data are presented for delta at times when the interface has become turbulent. The data are compared with the experiments of Vetter [Shock Waves 4, 247 (1995)] which were done in a straight test section geometry, to illustrate the effects of area convergence. It is found from schlieren images that the interface thickness grows about 40% to 50% more rapidly than in Vetter's experiments. Laser induced scattering is used to capture the air-helium interface at late times. Image processing of pictures is also used to determine the interface thickness in cases where it was not clear from the pictures and to obtain the dominant eddy-blob sizes in the mixing zone. Some computational studies are also presented to show the global geometry changes of the interface when it implodes into a conical geometry in both light-heavy and heavy-light cases

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: What’s wrong with existing analytical models?

This study critically evaluates analytical models presently used to estimate the cost of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from sources including the UN Millennium Project, the UN Development Programme, the World Bank and the Zedillo Commission. Effective strategic choices for achieving the MDGs must be based on sound assessments of the costs and benefits of alternative policies. However, the existing approaches are unreliable. They derive from implausible and restrictive assumptions, depend on poor quality data, and are undermined by the presence of large uncertainties concerning the future. An alternative and less technocratic approach to planning is required.poverty, development, Millennium Development Goals