"The "developing world's middle class" is defined here as those who are not poor when judged by the median poverty line …-fifths came from Asia, and half from China. Most of the new entrants remained fairly close to poverty, with incomes now bunched up …

"Prevailing measures of relative poverty put an implausibly high weight on relative deprivation, such that measured … poverty does not fall when all incomes grow at the same rate. This stems from the (implicit) assumption in past measures that … roles of certain private expenditures in poor settings and with data on national poverty lines. The authors propose a new …

We are not seeing faster progress against poverty amongst the poorest developing countries. Yet this is implied by … for 100 developing countries reveals an adverse effect on consumption growth of high initial poverty incidence at a given … initial mean. A high incidence of poverty also entails a lower subsequent rate of progress against poverty at any given growth …

Brazil, China and India have seen falling poverty in their reform periods, but to varying degrees and for different … reasons. History left China with favorable initial conditions for rapid poverty reduction through market-led economic growth … off, prior inequalities in various dimensions handicapped poverty reduction in both Brazil and India. Brazil's recent …

revisits the issues using a new series of consumption-based poverty measures spanning 50 years, and including a 15-year period … after economic reforms began in earnest in the early 1990s. Growth has tended to reduce poverty, including in the post …-reform period. There is no robust evidence that the responsiveness of poverty to growth has increased, or decreased, since the …

Against what standards should we judge the developing world's overall performance against poverty going forward? The …. The first measure is absolute consumption poverty, as judged by what "poverty" means in the poorest countries. The second … is a new relative poverty measure, embracing social inclusion needs consistently with national poverty lines. The …

-targeting transfers to poor people. This incentive argument does not imply, however, that workfare is more cost-effective against poverty … that for the same budget, workfare has less impact on poverty than either a basic-income scheme (providing the same … transfer to all) or uniform transfers based on the government's below-poverty-line ration cards. For workfare to dominate other …