How unequal is the world today? Is global income inequality falling, as many economists claim, or is it rising, as one often hears? This paper reviews the arguments and evidence. A number of concerns about the underlying data are identified, with biases going in both directions. Conceptual...

The chapter critically reviews the methods available for the ex post counterfactual analysis of programs that are assigned exclusively to individuals, households or locations. The emphasis is on the problems encountered in applying these methods to anti-poverty programs in developing countries,...

How much economic mobility is there across generations in a poor, primarily rural, economy? How much do intergenerational linkages contribute to current inequality? We address these questions using original survey data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of consumption. While...

Using original survey data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of consumption, we study the role played by land inheritance, other bequests and parental background as influences on an adult's economic welfare and economic activities. While intergenerational linkages are evident, we...

The "developing world's middle class" is defined here as those who are not poor when judged by the median poverty line of developing countries, but are still poor by US standards. The "Western middle class" is defined as those who are not poor by US standards. Although barely 80 million people...

How unequal is the world today? Is global income inequality falling, as many economists claim, or is it rising, as one often hears? This paper reviews the arguments and evidence. A number of concerns about the underlying data are identified, with biases going in both directions. Conceptual...

Using original survey data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of consumption, we study the role played by land inheritance, other bequests and parental background as influences on an adult's economic welfare and economic activities. While intergenerational linkages are evident, we...

Differing value judgments in measuring inequality underlie the conflicting factual claims about how much poor people have shared in the economic gains from globalization. Opponents in the debate differ in the extent to which they care about relative inequality versus absolute inequality,...

How did we come to think that eliminating poverty is a legitimate goal for public policy? What policies emerged in the hope of attaining that goal? The last 200 years have witnessed a dramatic change in thinking about poverty. Mainstream economic thinking in the eighteenth century held that...

We use 20 household surveys for India's 15 major states spanning 1960?1994 to study how the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how much growth reduced consumption poverty. The elasticities of measured poverty to farm yields and development...