The Developing World is Poorer than we Thought, but no Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4703, August. Forthcoming in Quarterly

Produced by the Research Support Team The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Policy ReseaRch WoRking PaPeR 4703 The paper presents a major overhaul to the World Bank’s past estimates of global poverty, incorporating new and better data. Extreme poverty—as judged by what “poverty ” means in the world’s poorest countries—is found to be more pervasive than we thought. Yet the data also provide robust evidence of continually declining poverty incidence and depth since the early 1980s. For 2005 we estimate that 1.4 billion people, or one quarter of the population of the developing world, lived below This paper—a product of the Development Research Group—is part of a larger effort in the department to monitor th