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Why Are Some People Poor?

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Abstract

This article reviews the debate on the changing ‘geography’ or location of global poverty. Specifically, that most global poverty is concentrated in a set of populous countries that have transitioned from low income countries to middle income countries. The article argues that the shift in global poverty implies a questioning of the dominant theory of absolute poverty in all but the world’s very poorest countries: that is, that poverty in developing countries is explicable at societal level by insufficient public and private resources to address absolute poverty. Instead, it is argued that a structural theory – meaning here a theory that takes account of questions of distribution – is increasingly relevant to most (but not all) of global poverty.

Abstract

Cet article repasse le débat sur la géographie ou l’emplacement changeant de la pauvreté globale. La plupart de la pauvreté globale est concentre dans des pays très peuples, qui ont fait la transition d’un faible revenue par personne a un revenu moyen par personne. On soutient que le changement dans la pauvreté globale comporte une mise en cause de la théorie dominante de la pauvreté absolue (c’est-à-dire, que la pauvreté dans les pays en voie de développement peut être expliqué au niveau sociale par la manque de ressources publiques et prives pour l’adresser) dans tous les pays du monde a exception des plus pauvres. Plutôt, on soutient qu’une théorie structurelle (qui tient en compte des questions de distribution) est de plus en plus approprié à la plupart de la pauvreté globale.

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Notes

  1. See for range of discussions see: Sumner, 2010, 2012; Alkire et al, 2011, 2015a, 2015b; Clarke and Feeny, 2011; Glennie, 2011; Poke and Whitman, 2011; Alonso, 2012; Edward and Sumner, 2014; Haddad, 2012, 2014; Herbert, 2012; Kanbur and Sumner, 2012; Keeley, 2012; Lundsgaarde, 2012; Carbone, 2013; Sumner and Mallet, 2012; Vásquez and Sumner, 2013, 2015; Alonso et al, 2014; Ottersen et al, 2014; Madrueño-Aguilar, 2015; Koch, 2015.

  2. Thanks to Isa Baud and Laura Camfield for comments on an earlier draft.

  3. This is ‘new bottom billion’ is based taking a consumption poverty line of $2 (in 2005 PPP) or $2.50 (in 2011PPP) or by taking multi-dimensional poverty (see Alkire et al, 2011, 2013, 2015a, 2015b).

  4. Estimates at $1.90 in 2012 differ slightly from the World Bank estimates of 896.7 million (of Ferriera et al, 2015) and 902 million (of Cruz et al, 2015) because estimates here do not ‘fill’ missing data with regional averages (see Ferriera et al, 2015, p. 28) nor extrapolate as the World Bank does, but take the closest available year.

  5. The UN LDC is based on a methodology that combines human assets (including nutrition, child mortality, school enrolment and adult literacy), economic vulnerability (measures of the instability of agricultural production, population displaced by natural disasters, instability in exports, and the share of agriculture in GDP and exports), proxies for economic ‘smallness’, ‘remoteness’ and GNI (Atlas) per capita. The main problem of the LDC category is that it is somewhat static. Guillaumont (2009), among others, has argued that the graduation criteria make it very difficult for countries to ‘graduate’, as the conditions for exit are difficult to meet.

  6. It is the case that some LDCs are actually MICs, and this somewhat undermines the sense of the LDCs being the poorest countries across a set of dimensions. Some are, at least in income per capita terms, not among the poorest LDCs; they are small population or small-island MICs, developing states that ought to be considered separately because of the specific macroeconomic vulnerabilities of such economies.

  7. Harriss-White identifies the following ways in which capitalism creates poverty: petty commodity production and trade, technological change and unemployment, (petty) commodification, harmful commodities and waste, pauperizing crises, climate-change related pauperization, and the unnecessary and/or incapacitated and/or dependent human body under capitalism.

  8. There are caveats, not least that food prices may rise due to the removal of the subsidy because of transportation costs though the poorest could be compensated for these too.

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  1. King’s International Development Institute, King’s College, London, UK

    Andy Sumner

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Sumner, A. Why Are Some People Poor?. Eur J Dev Res 28, 130–142 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2016.2

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