Resource Rents, Redistribution, and Halving Global Poverty: The Resource Dividend

Summary This paper considers the proposal that each country distributes its resource rents directly to citizens as a universal and unconditional cash transfer, or Resource Dividend, and estimates its potential impact on global poverty for the years 2000-06. Using a global dataset on resource rents and the distribution of income, I find that if every developing country implemented the policy then the number of people living below $1-a-day would be cut by between 27% and 66%, depending on the year and the assumptions made. Looking ahead, poverty could be better than halved as long as commodity prices do not drop below their 2004 level.global poverty inequality redistribution natural resource curse resource wealth income distribution