IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2013-062.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Global Poverty, Aid, and Middle-Income Countries: Are the Country Classifications Moribund or is Global Poverty in the Process of 'Nationalizing'?

Author

Listed:
  • Andy Sumner

Abstract

The majority of the world's poor, by income poverty and multi-dimensional poverty, now live in countries officially classified by the World Bank as middle-income countries. Of course nothing happens when a country crosses a (somewhat) arbitrary threshold in per capita income but it does matter to traditional OECD donors because not only are those thresholds used in numerous and various ways, the crossing of that arbitrary line is viewed as cause enough for some donors to at least consider ending aid.

Suggested Citation

  • Andy Sumner, 2013. "Global Poverty, Aid, and Middle-Income Countries: Are the Country Classifications Moribund or is Global Poverty in the Process of 'Nationalizing'?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-062, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2013-062
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/WP2013-062.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Berthélemy, Jean-Claude & Beuran, Monica & Maurel, Mathilde, 2009. "Aid and Migration: Substitutes or Complements?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 1589-1599, October.
    2. repec:pri:rpdevs:deaton_price_indexes_inequality_and_the_measurement_of_world_poverty_aer. is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ravallion Martin, 2010. "Do Poorer Countries Have Less Capacity for Redistribution?," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-31, December.
    4. Luis López-Calva & Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez, 2014. "A vulnerability approach to the definition of the middle class," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(1), pages 23-47, March.
    5. Alkire, Sabina & Foster, James, 2011. "Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 476-487.
    6. Kenny, Charles & Williams, David, 2001. "What Do We Know About Economic Growth? Or, Why Don't We Know Very Much?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 1-22, January.
    7. Martin Ravallion, 2013. "How Long Will It Take to Lift One Billion People Out of Poverty?," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 139-158, August.
    8. Sergio Tezanos V�zquez & Andy Sumner, 2013. "Revisiting the Meaning of Development: A Multidimensional Taxonomy of Developing Countries," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(12), pages 1728-1745, December.
    9. World Bank, 2011. "Regional Highlights World Development Indicators 2011," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 27344.
    10. Angus Deaton, 2010. "Price Indexes, Inequality, and the Measurement of World Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 5-34, March.
    11. Molenaers, Nadia & Renard, Robrecht, 2002. "Strengthening civil society from the outside? Donor driven consultation and participation processes in Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSP): the Bolivian case," IOB Discussion Papers 2002.05, Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).
    12. repec:pri:rpdevs:presidential%20address%2017january%202010%20all.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Hadenius, Axel & Uggla, Fredrik, 1996. "Making civil society work, promoting democratic development: What can states and donors do?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(10), pages 1621-1639, October.
    14. Kanbur, Ravi & Mukherjee, Diganta, 2007. "Poverty, relative to the ability to eradicate it: An index of poverty reduction failure," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 52-57, October.
    15. Todd Moss and Ben Leo, 2011. "IDA at 65: Heading Toward Retirement or a Fragile Lease on Life? - Working Paper 246," Working Papers 246, Center for Global Development.
    16. Angus Deaton & Alan Heston, 2010. "Understanding PPPs and PPP-Based National Accounts," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 1-35, October.
    17. Sergei Soares & Rafael Guerreiro Osório & Fábio Veras Soares & Marcelo Medeiros & Eduardo Zepeda, 2009. "Conditional cash transfers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico: impacts upon inequality," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 0(Special i), pages 207-224.
    18. Frank-Oliver Aldenhoff, 2007. "Are economic forecasts of the International Monetary Fund politically biased? A public choice analysis," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 239-260, September.
    19. Sabina Alkire, 2011. "Multidimensional Poverty and its Discontents," OPHI Working Papers 46, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    20. Kanbur, Ravi, 2011. "Poor Countries or Poor People? Development Assistance and the New Geography of Global Poverty," CEPR Discussion Papers 8489, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    21. World Bank, 2011. "World Development Indicators 2011," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2315.
    22. Kenneth Harttgen & Stephan Klasen, 2010. "Fragility and MDG Progress: How useful is the Fragility Concept?," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 41, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    23. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2013. "The Future of Global Poverty," One Pager 204, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    24. Amanda Glassman, Denizhan Duran, Andy Sumner, 2011. "Global Health and the New Bottom Billion: What Do Shifts in Global Poverty and the Global Disease Burden Mean for GAVI and the Global Fund? - Working Paper 270," Working Papers 270, Center for Global Development.
    25. Frantz, Telmo Rudi, 1987. "The role of NGOs in the strengthening of civil society," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 15(1, Supple), pages 121-127.
    26. Rauniyar, Ganesh P. & Kanbur, Ravi, 2010. "Inclusive Development: Two Papers on Conceptualization, Application, and the ADB Perspective," Working Papers 57036, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clara Capelli & Gianni Vaggi, 2013. "A better indicator of standards of living: The Gross National Disposable Income," DEM Working Papers Series 062, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
    2. Gianni Vaggi, 2015. "Development and the post-2015 challenges: making the Sustainable Development Goals work," DEM Working Papers Series 107, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
    3. Clara Capelli & Gianni Vaggi, 2014. "Why Gross National Disposable Income should substitute Gross National Income," DEM Working Papers Series 091, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
    4. Tamas Novak, 2015. "Innovative finance for development - Instruments of social integration and responsibility in lower-middle-income countries (LMICs)," IWE Working Papers 212, Institute for World Economics - Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sumner, Andy, 2013. "Global Poverty, Aid, and Middle-Income Countries: Are the Country Classifications Moribund or is Global Poverty in the Process of 'Nationalizing'?," WIDER Working Paper Series 062, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Andy Sumner, 2012. "Where Will the World’s Poor Live? An Update on Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion," Working Papers 305, Center for Global Development.
    3. Sumner, Andy, 2012. "Where Do The Poor Live?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 865-877.
    4. Edward, Peter & Sumner, Andy, 2014. "Estimating the Scale and Geography of Global Poverty Now and in the Future: How Much Difference Do Method and Assumptions Make?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 67-82.
    5. Andy Sumner, 2012. "The Buoyant Billions: How “Middle Class” Are the New Middle Classes in Developing Countries? (And Why Does It Matter?)," Working Papers 309, Center for Global Development.
    6. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2013. "The Future of Global Poverty in a Multi-Speed World: New Estimates of Scale, Location and Cost," Working Papers 111, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    7. Facundo Alvaredo & Leonardo Gasparini, 2013. "Recent Trends in Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0151, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    8. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2014. "The Poor, the Prosperous and the ‘Inbetweeners’: A Fresh Perspective on Global Society, Inequality and Growth," Working Papers 122, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    9. Andy Sumner, 2012. "The Buoyant Billions: How “Middle Class†Are the New Middle Classes in Developing Countries? (And Why Does It Matter?)," Working Papers id:5169, eSocialSciences.
    10. Ugo Gentilini & Andy Sumner, 2012. "Poverty Where People Live: What do National Poverty Lines Tell us about Global Poverty?," Working Papers 98, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    11. Andy Sumner & Peter Edward, 2013. "From Low Income, High Poverty to High-Income, No Poverty? An Optimistic View of the Long-Run Evolution of Poverty in Indonesia By International Poverty Lines, 1984–2030," Working Papers in Economics and Development Studies (WoPEDS) 201310, Department of Economics, Padjadjaran University, revised Jun 2013.
    12. Ms. Evridiki Tsounta & Anayochukwu Osueke, 2014. "What is Behind Latin America’s Declining Income Inequality?," IMF Working Papers 2014/124, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2015. "New estimates of global poverty and inequality: How much difference do price data," Working Papers 365, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    14. Permanyer, Iñaki, 2014. "Assessing individuals' deprivation in a multidimensional framework," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 1-16.
    15. Kumar, Neha & Raghunathan, Kalyani & Arrieta, Alejandra & Jilani, Amir & Pandey, Shinjini, 2021. "The power of the collective empowers women: Evidence from self-help groups in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    16. Brian A'Hearn & Nicola Amendola & Giovanni Vecchi, 2016. "On Historical Household Budgets," Rivista di storia economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2, pages 137-176.
    17. Amanda Glassman, Denizhan Duran, Andy Sumner, 2011. "Global Health and the New Bottom Billion: What Do Shifts in Global Poverty and the Global Disease Burden Mean for GAVI and the Global Fund? - Working Paper 270," Working Papers 270, Center for Global Development.
    18. Sabina Alkire & Jose Manuel Roche & Andy Sumner, 2013. "Where do the World's Multidimensionally Poor People Live?," OPHI Working Papers 61, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    19. Charles Kenny, Jonathan Karver, and Andy Sumner, 2012. "MDGs 2.0: What Goals, Targets, and Timeframe? - Working Paper 297," Working Papers 297, Center for Global Development.
    20. Hanjie Wang & Qiran Zhao & Yunli Bai & Linxiu Zhang & Xiaohua Yu, 2020. "Poverty and Subjective Poverty in Rural China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 219-242, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2013-062. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.