"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 …

"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 …

poverty in terms of consumption (or income) is the overriding issue in poor countries, and (2) the only thing that really … matters to reducing absolute income poverty is the rate of economic growth. The author takes (1) as given but questions (2 …, influences the extent of poverty today and the prospects for rapid poverty reduction in the future. "--World Bank web site …

workfare scheme in which the government acts as the employer of last resort. Is this a cost-effective policy against poverty … sufficient for a typical poor family to reach the poverty line would bring the annual poverty rate down from 34 percent to 25 … (three months) would bring the annual poverty rate down to 31 percent at a cost of 1.3 percent of GDP. While the gains from a …