Counting the poor: the truth about world poverty statistics

Knowing the extent of acute deprivation in the world, and how far it is changing over time, is crucial to assessing the state of the world, and the appropriateness of the policies currently being followed by states and international institutions. This explains the widespread interest that has attended the strenuous debate which has emerged in the last four years concerning the present extent and recent trend of poverty in the world. This debate centres, in particular, on the validity of the global poverty estimates produced by the World Bank. It is entirely uncontroversial that the extent of absolute deprivations is centrally relevant to assessing the state of the world. Thus, the fact that the Bank's global poverty estimates have been questioned from all sides is very significant. In particular, the controversy is relevant to assessing progress toward the first of the so-called Millennium Development Goals (adopted by the United Nations as a governing framework for development policy), which calls for halving poverty (as estimated by the Bank on the basis of its one dollar a day concept, discussed further below) by 2015