PHM-Exch> Poverty, Disconnected: The IMF Journal's view

[Claudio Schuftan]

Yes, I do think this is mere 'chronicling poverty' without much a-do.  No
disconnect! The 'pessimistic view' still holds. This is 'trickle down'
dressed in new clothes.
Claudio

From: Ruggiero, Mrs. Ana Lucia (WDC) ruglucia at paho.org

 *Poverty, Disconnected

*

*Ravi Kanbur is a Professor of Economics at Cornell University***

*IMF Finance & Development - December 2009

*

Available online at:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2009/12/pdf/kanbur.pdf

‘……..Economists have long sought to improve on gross domestic product as a
measure of growth and wellbeing. What is needed, many say, is a new way to
gauge economic, environmental, and social sustainability. For those at the
bottom of the income pyramid, living on a dollar a day or less, such musings
may seem both irrelevant and farfetched. But work by the Commission on the
Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress—set up by the French
government under the leadership of economists *Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya
Sen*—represents the culmination of many years of effort to reduce reliance
on per capita income growth or consumption.

Distributional indicators, such as poverty statistics constructed from
household income and expenditure surveys, help spotlight the plight of the
poor. In some countries, such as India, the announcement of official poverty
figures is a major event with significant political and policy implications.
And in the past two decades many countries have begun to conduct household
surveys aimed at chronicling poverty, with the result that poverty
statistics are more widely available across the globe.

What have we learned from the new data? Setting aside the effects of the
crises of the late 2000s and looking back two decades from the mid-2000s,
the broad facts can be classified into the following stylized patterns
(Kanbur, forthcoming). Where there has been no economic growth, poverty has
risen. This is true of many African and some Latin American countries. In a
large number of countries, including the biggest ones, such as India and
China, and even in some African countries, such as Ghana, there has been
fast growth by historical standards, and poverty—the percentage of the
population below the poverty line—has fallen, as measured by official data.

What is interesting, however, is the disconnect between the optimistic
picture painted by these official data on poverty and the more pessimistic
view of grassroots activists, civil society, and policymakers more
generally……..”
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