A Measured Approach to Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity: Concepts, Data, and the Twin GoalsIn 2013, the World Bank Group adopted two new goals to guide its work: ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. More specifically, the goals are to reduce extreme poverty in the world to less than 3 percent by 2030, and to foster income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population in each country. While poverty reduction has been a mainstay of the World Bank’s mission for decades, the Bank has now set a specific goal and timetable, and for the first time, the Bank has explicitly included a goal linked to ensuring that growth is shared by all. The discussion until now has centered primarily on articulating the new goals. This report, the latest in World Bank’s Policy Research Report series, goes beyond that and lays out their conceptual underpinnings, discusses their relative strengths and weaknesses by contrasting them with alternative indicators, and proposes empirical approaches and requirements to track progress towards the goals. The report makes clear that the challenges posed by the World Bank Group’s new stance extend not just to the pursuit of these goals but, indeed, to their very definition and empirical content. The report also argues that an improved data infrastructure, consisting of many elements including the collection of more and better survey data, is critical to ensure that progress towards these goals can be measured, and policies to help achieve them can be identified and prioritized. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
aggregate assess average income Bangladesh Bank PovcalNet database Bank’s Based on data boosting shared prosperity bottom 40 percent capita census chapter climate change consumption expenditure country level country-specific country’s Deaton developing countries discussion economic growth example extreme poverty Figure global poverty global poverty estimates global poverty line household consumption expenditure household survey data impacts imputation income distribution income growth income or consumption increase India inequality Lanjouw mean income measure of poverty measure poverty national accounts national accounts growth national poverty lines overall panel percentile Policy Research poorest poverty and shared poverty gap poverty headcount poverty line poverty measures poverty rates poverty reduction PPP data PPP index projections purchasing power parity questionnaire regional relative Research Working Paper rural scenario shared prosperity goal shared prosperity indicator simulations small area estimates social welfare functions Source statistical Sub-Saharan Africa Tanzania tion trajectories Washington weights World Bank PovcalNet World Development