Global poverty estimates based on 2011 purchasing power parity: where should the new poverty line be drawn?

This paper aims to present a new global poverty line based on the 2011 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). To calculate a new global poverty threshold based on 2011 PPP, this paper moves away from the World Bank’s method of anchoring a single global poverty line on the national poverty lines of the 15 poorest countries. It instead proposes an alternative method of using equivalent poverty lines. Each country is shown to have a different equivalent poverty line. This paper finds that there is no single international poverty line in 2011 PPP that is equivalent to $1.25 in 2005 PPP. Single poverty lines vary for each region because countries have experienced different inflation rates and have different PPP conversion rates between 2005 and 2011. To calculate a single poverty line in 2011 PPP, this paper measures the weighted average of equivalent poverty lines of 101 countries around the globe with weights proportional to their populations. Based on the new method, the corresponding poverty line is estimated at $1.93 in 2011 PPP. The World Bank has officially adopted the poverty line of $1.90 in 2011 PPP. This paper demonstrates that our proposed poverty line performs better than the World Bank’s in terms of preserving the real purchasing power of the previous line of $1.25 in 2005 PPP. Given the new poverty threshold of $1.93, the number of poor worldwide is reduced by 6.42 million, with the reduction largely occurring in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.     

Estimating international poverty lines from comparable national thresholds

The World Bank’s international poverty line (IPL) of $1.90/day at 2011 PPPs is based on a collection of national poverty lines provided in Ravallion et al. (World Bank Econ. Rev. 23(2), 163–184, 2009), originally used to set the IPL of $1.25/day at 2005 PPPs. This paper proposes an approach for estimating a more recent, complete and comparable collection of national poverty thresholds from reported national poverty rates, and then presents a set of IPLs based on this new database of national poverty lines. In contrast to the lines used to estimate the $1.90 IPL, this approach produces national poverty lines that are (1) consistent with national poverty rates, (2) expressed in common units, and (3) provide greater support to the estimated IPL. These national poverty lines are used to estimate an extreme IPL, and three higher IPLs that are more relevant to higher-income countries. We provide evidence of the robustness and relevance of the $1.90 IPL as a measure of extreme poverty for low-income countries.     

International income poverty measurement: which way now?

We critically review conceptual and empirical issues surrounding the derivation of the international poverty line, expressed in PPP-adjusted dollars and linked to various rounds of the International Comparison Program (ICP). We find that there are some limitations in the current estimation of these lines, but show that statistically superior methods lead to lines that are relatively robust and confirm the $1.25 using 2005 PPPs and suggest $1.67–1.71 using 2011 PPPs (or close to the $1.90 proposed by the World Bank if we follow the World Bank’s approach of adjusting inflation rates in some countries); they also roughly confirm the current shape of the proposed ‘weakly relative’ poverty line. Using the new absolute line based on 2011 PPPs would lead to substantially lower poverty in our estimation. The extent of the decline depends on whether and how one treats China, India, and Indonesia differently from other countries in the 2005 and 2011 PPPs. More seriously, we note that the dependence on successive ICP rounds creates conceptual and empirical problems that have become worse over time so that we suggest that it would be best to consider alternatives to the current reliance on ICP rounds and the resulting PPPs. As a short-term solution we propose to fix the international poverty line in national currencies using either the 2005 or 2011 level; in the medium term, we argue for global poverty measurement based on internationally coordinated national poverty measurement.     

Global inequality recalculated and updated: the effect of new PPP estimates on global inequality and 2005 estimates

The results of new direct price level comparisons across 146 countries in 2005 have led to large revisions of PPP (purchasing power parity) exchanges rates, particularly for China and India. The recalculations of international and global inequalities, using the new PPPs, show that inequalities are substantially higher than previously thought. Inequality between global citizens is estimated at 70 Gini points rather than 65 as before. This high level of inequality is confirmed by the results obtained from the new set of 122 national household surveys from around year 2005.     

New Agendas and New Patterns of International NGO Political Action

International advocacy strategies devised for the political environment in which World Bank policy is decided are often not suitable for advocacy on broader financial policy and trade issues. Advocacy in these new agendas challenges prevailing models, which depict NGOs as mobilizing powerful governments and international organizations to influence a government's behavior. The patterns of international NGO political activity are diverse, sometimes restraining the power of international rules and authorities over individual governments, and require a new or broader model     

On the underestimation of migration’s income and poverty impact

In estimating the impact of migration on income and poverty, most existing studies have overlooked the fact that migration changes the size of the household. The ‘corrected’ impact that accounts for changes in household size is presented analytically and is estimated on the basis of data from nationally representative household surveys in Albania and Ghana. The analysis considers three poverty measures and four groups of migrant households: those with internal, international, internal and international, and internal and/or international migrants. The ratio of the corrected to the uncorrected impact on per capita income for Ghana (Albania) averages from 2.7 to 4.5 (2.5–3.8), and the ratio for the poverty impact averages from 2.6 to 4.4 (2.1–6.4). Thus, abstracting from changes in household size may result in a substantial underestimate of the impact of migration on income and poverty.

The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow: Judaism for the masses

In 2012, a new Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opened in Moscow – an event unthinkable during the Soviet regime. Financed at the level of $50 million, created by an international crew of academics and museum designers, and located in a landmark building, the museum immediately rose to a position of cultural prominence in the Russian museum scene. Using interactive technology and multimedia, the museum's core exhibition presents several centuries of complex local Jewish history, including the Second World War period. Naturally, the Holocaust is an important part of the story. Olga Gershenson's essay analyzes the museum's relationship to Holocaust history and memory in the post-Soviet context. She describes the museum's struggle to reconcile a Soviet understanding of the “Great Patriotic War” with a dominant Western narrative of the Holocaust, while also bringing the Holocaust in the Soviet Union to a broader audience via the museum. Through recorded testimonies, period documents, and film, the museum's display narrates the events of the Holocaust on Soviet soil. This is a significant revision of the Soviet-era discourse, which universalized and externalized the Holocaust. But this important revision is limited by the museum's choice to avoid the subject of local collaborators and bystanders. The museum shies away from the most pernicious aspect of the Holocaust history on Soviet soil, missing an opportunity to take historic responsibility and confront the difficult past.     

Public‐private partnerships (PPPs) in development policy: Exploring the concept and practice

Public‐private partnerships (PPPs) have proliferated in development studies over the past decades. However, the partnership notion often remains loosely defined, thus making it difficult to grasp the concept and evaluate practice. This article aims to contribute to conceptual and empirical exploration of the PPP concept. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, we frame eight characteristics of PPPs in development policy. Turning then to exploration of empirical practice, we present a longitudinal analysis of PPPs in Danish development policy over a 20‐year period. The conceptual and empirical insights are aimed at PPP development researchers and practitioners alike.     

Social Protection,Gender, and Poverty: Application of Social Protection Index

Literature on social protection, inequality, and poverty suggest that social protection programs are the policy tool for the eradication of poverty and inequality. The exact targeting of beneficiaries is the most important pillar behind the success of every social protection schemes. Asian Development Bank introduced Revised Social Protection Index in 2010, which is used by several studies for the evaluation of social protection schemes. The current study estimates the revised social protection index of Pakistan for the years 2011 and 2013. During 2011, the average per capita expenditure on social protection was 5.1% of the poverty line expenditure, whereas during 2013, average per capita expenditure on social protection was 5.3% of the poverty line expenditure. The disaggregated form of social protection index indicates that the coverage of social protection programs are low in Pakistan. The expenditures on social protection programs are high for the non-poor and very low for poor. The gender-based disaggregated form of social protection index shows that women have a lower value of social protection index than do males.     

Child welfare workers’ constructions and causal explanations of poverty

Studying the perceptions of the causes of poverty is warranted because individual perceptions shape behavior toward poor people and actions related to poverty. Prior studies relying heavily on survey methodology fail to capture deeper and fuller meanings participants apply to poverty. This study explores how child welfare workers understand poverty by examining their definitions of, and what they see as causal explanations of, poverty. Individual interviews were conducted with 30 child welfare workers throughout a Midwestern state. Analysis indicated that workers all defined poverty as ‘not getting basic needs met,’ corresponding to the underlying assumptions of absolute poverty measures. Workers simultaneously augmented these definitions using other poverty constructions, namely the federal guidelines and more complex views – conceptually in line with relative poverty measures – that account for factors outside income or consumption. Workers’ causal explanations of poverty were multifaceted. Causal explanations included structural/systemic, individual, family/generational, and luck, with the first three being most prominent. These findings have implications for practice and training in the child welfare system as it relates to poverty.     

The strategies that bind: NGO coalitions and their influence

Abstract This article examines NGOs as strategic organizations that form coalitions in order to influence other actors, particularly international financial institutions. It has three primary aims: to examine NGOs as strategic organizations; to look at a particular type of NGO network, the coalition, which unlike a network involves more value and commitment; and to assess the factors that contribute to their strategies such as changes to the NGO environment. To do this, the resource dependency perspective is utilized to evaluate the influence of various resources (funding, legitimacy and information) on NGOs’ organizational strategy. Oxfam International, the NGO Working Group on the World Bank, and the Bretton Woods Project are three NGO coalitions examined. I conclude that there are differences between NGO networks and coalitions and that the coalitions strategically act and react to changing resources in their environments.     

Community orientation of services for persons with a psychiatric disability. Comparison between Estonia,Hungary and the Netherlands

This article explores the way mental health services and social services are orientated on assisting people with a psychiatric disability to participate in different areas of community life. A large research project about community participation in three different countries (Estonia, Hungary and the Netherlands) confirms the findings of other studies that – regardless of geographical location – people with a psychiatric disability have difficulty fulfilling social roles in the community. They are often faced with fewer opportunities than other citizens, due to their health problems, stigma, discrimination and poverty [World Health Organisation. (2011). World report on disability. Geneva: WHO]. An important objective of social work is to help people find their way in society. Surprisingly enough, in all three countries, most social workers are mainly focused on solving individual problems, and not on community participation. Shifting the focus starts by having a clear awareness of the notion of community participation. Social workers have to work both on supporting individuals to find their way in the community (individual support), and on supporting social networks in the community to accommodate persons with a disability on the basis of equal and valued citizenship (community support).     

Nature and the international: towards a materialist understanding of societal multiplicity

ABSTRACT

The global environmental crisis requires a grasp of how human society interacts with nature, but also, simultaneously, how the world is divided into multiple societies. International Relations has a weak grasp of nature treating it as external to the international – an ‘environment’ to be managed – while environmentalism has a planetary epistemology that occludes the significance of the international. How to break this impasse? While neither Geopolitics nor ‘new materialism’ capture the complex conjuncture of socio-natural and inter-societal dynamics, I argue that Justin Rosenberg’s theorization of the international as ‘the consequences of societal multiplicity’ provides a theoretical opening. If a materialist notion of societal is adopted, ‘societal multiplicity’ allows human-natural and international dynamics to be grasped together. Thus, climate change is not a problem arising exogenously to the international, but something emerging through international dynamics, reciprocally affecting the units, structure and processes of the international system itself.     

Light public–private partnerships in the water supply sector: Malawi and other case studies from sub‐Saharan Africa

The article analyzes light forms of Public–Private Partnership (PPP), namely management and service contracts, in the water supply sector of sub‐Saharan Africa, based on original research in Malawi and on a review of five additional case studies. We refer to information asymmetries and contract theory to explain the observed performances of the PPPs. The article considers the incentives to engage in the partnership and to commit effort, together with the challenges which can prevent effort from translating into actual results. The study concludes that some problems encountered by light PPP experiences are intrinsic to their incentive structure and discusses the policy implications of light PPPs promotion in the context of the Aid Effectiveness debate.     

IMF Gold and the World Bank's Unfunded HIPC Deficit

The World Bank is to forgive $12.24 billion in IDA debt payments from HIPC borrowers. It has received $1 billion from the HIPC Trust Fund to help offset these losses, but still has a $11.6 billion unfunded liability. The IMF has gold worth $38 billion on hand for which it has no actual use. This article proposes that a small portion of IMF gold be sold annually, just enough to offset IDA's annual HIPC deficit, over the next twenty years. The new money would be additional and predictable, and would eliminate the prospect that IDA would have to cut back its future flow of aid because the HIPC programme had drained its resources.     

Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study

Atkinson’s book Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Harvard University Press, 2015) sets out a range of concrete proposals aimed at reducing income inequality, which cover a very broad span but include major changes to the income tax and social transfers system and the minimum wage. These are framed with specific reference to the UK but have much broader relevance in demonstrating how substantial the impact on inequality of such measures could be. This paper assesses the first-round effects of these tax, transfer and minimum wage reforms on income inequality and poverty based on a microsimulation approach using EUROMOD. The reforms involve a significantly more progressive income tax structure, a major increase in the minimum wage to the level which is estimated to represent the ‘Living Wage’, and alternative routes to reforming social transfers – either to strengthen the social insurance element or to restructure the entire system as a Participation Income (a variant of Basic/Citizen’s Income). The results show how the first-round effects of either set of tax and transfer proposals would be to substantially reduce the extent of income inequality and relative income poverty and the paper draws out how the two approaches differ in their effects. The additional impact of raising the minimum wage to the Living Wage is modest, reflecting in particular the position of beneficiaries in the household income distribution and the offsetting effects on household income of the withdrawal of means-tested cash transfers.     

Index of Volume 4, 2002

This article links a theoretical debate within poststructural feminisms – whether feminist politics can be pursued without hegemonic representations of women and gender – to the practice of transnational feminist organizing in the World Conference against Racism (WCAR) in Durban in 2001. It goes beyond the traditional analysis of ‘adding’ gender to a mega world conference and asks the critical question of what

gender signifies in this instance of UN politics. The article argues that feminists’ strategic use of the concept of ‘gender as intersectionality’ marks a paradigm shift from the predominant monolithic representation of gender as women, being equal to or different from men, in international human rights frameworks. It puts the issue of diversity among women at the forefront of the intergovernmental WCAR. Far from entailing an abandonment of feminist politics, as some poststructuralist feminists have suggested, it is argued that opening up ‘gender’ for unlimited signification in

the case of WCAR marks the beginning of a new phase of transnational feminist mobilization.     

Poverty, inequality, and populist politics in Iran

Despite nearly three decades of revolutionary government rule, poverty and inequality remain the central issues of political debate in Iran. The unexpected electoral victory of Ahmadinejad, the populist candidate in the 2005 presidential election, has been widely attributed to rising poverty and inequity. Using household survey data, I examine the trends in poverty and inequality for the last three decades and show that this thesis is not grounded in facts. Survey data show that poverty has substantially declined in recent years, and is low by international standards and in comparison with pre-revolution years. This finding is consistent with pro-poor policies of the Islamic government, mainly in provision of basic infrastructure such as electricity, safe drinking water, and health. However, the same policies have not been as effective in reducing inequality, which, after an initial decline following the Revolution, has remained basically constant in the post-Revolution period. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Third Annual World Bank Conference on Inequality, Washington, DC, June 5–6, 2006. I wish to thank for comments Francisco Ferreira, Hojat Ghandi, Farrukh Iqbal, Essie Maassoumi, Branko Milanovic, Javad Shirazi, Vijayendra Rao, and two anonymous referees. For able research assistance I am grateful to Ali Hashemi and Marenglen Marku, and for access to survey data to the Statistical Center of Iran. All errors are mine.     

Understanding the link between poverty and food insecurity among children: Does the definition of poverty matter?

This paper examines the association between poverty and food insecurity among children, using two different definitions of poverty – the official poverty measure (OPM) and the new supplemental poverty measure (SPM) of the Census Bureau, which is based on a more inclusive definition of family resources and needs. Our analysis is based on data from the 2001–2011 Current Population Survey and shows that food insecurity and very low food security among children decline as income-to-needs ratio increases. The point estimates show that the associations are stronger as measured by the new supplemental measure of income-to-needs ratio than when estimated through the official measure. Statistical tests reject the hypothesis that poor households' odds of experiencing low food security are the same whether the SPM or OPM measure is used; but the tests do not reject the hypothesis when very low food security is the outcome.     

Liberalisation Failed: Understanding Persistent State Power in the Burkinabè Cotton Sector from 1990 to 2004

The literature characterises African states as unable to subvert pressure from the World Bank to liberalise their economies. This article contradicts this narrative by showing how Burkina Faso adopted a cotton‐sector liberalisation plan that retained significant state control. It argues that French influence, the sequence of regional liberalisations, and an ideological shift at the World Bank opened up political space for Burkina Faso to propose alternative and more moderate liberalisation reforms – in this case, the inclusion of a producers' organisation in cotton governance rather than a privatisation of cotton‐sector activities. Heavy involvement in the formation of the producers' organisation allowed the Burkinabè state to retain control of its cotton sector, paradoxically, via the full implementation of its liberalisation reforms.