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 …