The where and why of global poverty: Changing understanding of the location of global poverty
Countering previous assumptions, research by geographers at King’s College London has demonstrated that most of the world’s poorest people now live in middle-income countries (MICs) rather than low-income countries.
Issue
Approximately 700 million people around the world are estimated to live in extreme poverty. The eradication of poverty in all its forms by 2030 is the first of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG1). To eradicate poverty, it is vital to know where in the world people in poverty are living, understand the causes of persistent poverty, and be able to measure poverty accurately.
Approach
Geographers at King’s College London carried out a statistical analysis of the World Bank’s global poverty data from 2008, showing that the majority of the world’s poor now live in countries classified by the World Bank as MICs.
Modelling future scenarios to 2030 showed that, even under the most favourable assumptions, there was no strongly compelling case for assuming poverty in MICs would disappear as countries became better off. This research is significant because it means that focusing only on the poorest countries – low-income countries – will not eradicate absolute poverty
The research tested in-depth a new measure of inequality connecting inequality with poverty: the Palma Ratio. The new measure is more sensitive to changes at the top and bottom of the income distribution.
Impact
For staff at the World Bank, this change in understanding led them to place greater emphasis on poverty analysis in MICs. Oxfam’s flagship Inequality Guide 2017 references King’s research and mirrors the 2016 World Bank report ‘Taking on Inequality’.
Research on the Palma Ratio has contributed to the measure being adopted in the statistical databases of international institutions and has enabled non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to refine nationally-specific institutional strategies in MICs.
International NGOs, including Oxfam, Action Aid and Save the Children, have evolved to advocating for policies that aim to reduce national inequality to better fulfil their goal of ending poverty.
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How to cite
Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (2023) The where and why of global poverty: Changing understanding of the location of global poverty. Available at https://rgs.org/globalpoverty Last accessed on: <date>