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Articles by Daniel Gerszon
Missing evidence: tracking academic data use around the world
In recent decades, the amount of data produced has exploded, generating boundless opportunities for policies to improve people’s lives. Though data can be valuable in their raw form, the full value of data is only realized when they are analyzed to create insights, and these insights are converted to public policies or increased accountability. Academic research is a major source of these insights.
Time to stop referring to the “developing world”
When working in an international financial institution, it is hard to find a document that does not refer to “developing countries” or “the developing world.” (Fortunately, it is now rare to find the term “third world”.) In the World Bank, this concept typically encompasses all 135 countries as low- or middle-income, whose 6.7 billion people are home to 84% of the world’s population.
Tracking Academic Data Use around the World
Publication: Missing Evidence: Tracking Academic Data Use around the World Data-driven research on a country is key to producing evidence-based public policies. Yet little is known about where data-driven research is lacking and how it could be expanded. This paper proposes a method for tracking academic data use by country of subject, applying natural language processing to open-access research papers.
Illustrating the gap between the global extreme poor and global emissions
In 2023, 691 million people are estimated to live on less than $2.15, the international extreme poverty line. As global temperatures continue to rise, leading to worse living conditions for millions of people worldwide, the poorest are the most vulnerable and will be the most severely impacted.
Responsible use of natural resources: Essential for sustainable growth
SDG 12 calls for the sustainable production and consumption of goods and services. A country can be considered to be on a sustainable path if it can maintain its standard of living without depleting its natural resources or otherwise degrading the environment, for example, by polluting or not managing waste well. In that spirit, SDG target 12.2 aims to achieve sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources by 2030.
Poverty is back to pre-COVID levels globally, but not for low-income countries
The economic setbacks of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the largest increase in global extreme poverty in decades. Global poverty has now receded to levels closer to those prior to the pandemic, but this means that we have lost three years in the fight against poverty. The recovery is also uneven: while extreme poverty in middle-income countries has decreased, poverty in the poorest countries and countries affected by fragility, conflict or violence is still worse than before the pandemic.
Progress and setbacks in reducing income inequalities
SDG 10 promotes a more equitable world by calling for reducing inequality within and among countries. One indicator of our progress toward this goal is income inequality, which can be measured by the so-called Gini index. Gini indices measure inequality on a scale from zero, indicating perfect equality, to 100, indicating one person having all resources. Inequalities around the world vary greatly, with countries’ income Ginis typically lying within a range of 25 to 60.
Progress, challenges in ending extreme poverty
SDG target 1.1 calls for eradicating extreme poverty globally by 2030. Extreme poverty is defined using the international poverty line of $2.15 per day, which reflects the typical poverty line of the poorest countries of the world. The world has made significant progress in reducing extreme poverty over the past few decades.
The climate implications of ending global poverty
Eradicating extreme poverty and stopping global warming can only be tackled together: reducing poverty without considering carbon emissions is a self-defeating strategy, as climate change impacts will threaten hardly won development gains. But despite rapid progress to decarbonize the world economy, reducing poverty by increasing people’s consumption today requires increasing carbon emissions, since economic systems in most developing countries still rely on fossil fuel energy.
Up or down? How have poverty rates in low and middle-income countries changed in 2023?
Low and middle-income economies have borne the brunt of the global shocks and crises facing the world over the past few years, and recent research into poverty trends in these countries paints a concerning picture. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented reversal of consistent decline in global poverty and caused the single largest annual increase in poverty rates since global poverty monitoring began, as documented in the 2022 Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report.
Most of the world’s extreme poor live in middle income countries - but not for long
In the early 1990s, there was a near complete overlap between poor people and poor countries, with more than 9 out of 10 of the world’s extreme poor living in low-income countries at the time. If one wanted to target the poorest people in the world, helping exclusively the poorest countries of the world was both necessary and nearly sufficient.
The Climate Implications of Ending Global Poverty
Previous studies have explored potential conflicts between ending poverty and limiting global warming, by focusing on the carbon emissions of the world’s poorest. This paper instead focuses on economic growth as the driver of poverty alleviation and estimates the emissions associated with the growth needed to eradicate poverty. With this framing, eradicating poverty requires not only increasing the consumption of poor people, but also the consumption of non-poor people in poor countries.
April 2018 global poverty update from the World Bank
In April, PovcalNet revised the World Bank’s global and regional poverty estimates from 1981 to 2013. The next major update of global and regional poverty estimates is scheduled for October 2018, when the global poverty estimates for the reference year 2015 will be released. This will coincide with the launch of the next Poverty and Shared Prosperity report (the 2016 Poverty and Shared Prosperity report can be found here).
Death and destitution: Taking poverty seriously in assessing the global welfare burden of the pandemic
Since its outbreak at the end of 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought massive losses in well-being all over the world, mainly through its health and economic consequences. But which of these two types of consequences constitutes the largest welfare loss? Does the answer to this question vary systematically across countries? How large were the aggregate welfare losses, and how were they distributed across countries?
High energy prices - who is most impacted and why?
The household survey micro data used to generate the analysis and charts of this blog can be accessed through the World Bank’s Statistics On-Line tool. Learn how to use it here. Energy prices have risen sharply over the past year, a trend that was exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Though energy prices are projected to decline by 11% in 2023, if that projection materializes, energy prices would still be 75% above their average over the past five years.
Estimates of global poverty from WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall
The World Bank has continuously tracked global poverty at least since 1990 (for example, see World Bank 1990; ; Ferreira et al. 2016, World Bank 2022). This also coincides with the beginning of our contemporary period of widely available household survey data which are needed to measure poverty. There is, however, a void for many countries before the 1990s. Household survey data is far more scarce in the 1980s and almost non-existent before then.
Machine learning and the measurement of injustice
Machine learning methods are increasingly applied in the development policy arena. Among many recent policy applications, machine learning has been used to predict poverty, soil properties, and conflicts. In a recent Policy Research Working Paper by Paolo Brunori, Paul Hufe and Daniel Mahler (BHM hereafter), machine learning methods are utilized to measure a popular understanding of distributional injustice – the amount of unequal opportunities individuals face.
Global poverty in the 2020s is on a new, worse course
COVID-19 has had a profound impact on health and well-being around the world. In this blog, we report updated nowcasts of global poverty up to 2022. Estimates of global poverty for the years up to 2019 are available in the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP). Our past projections of global poverty (for instance see here) used only the growth in average national income to project each household’s income.
September 2022 global poverty update from the World Bank: 2017 PPPs and new data for India
Global poverty estimates were updated today on the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP). This update includes only two changes to the data (more details here): As previously announced, the September PIP update moves from the 2011 Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) to the 2017 PPPs to estimate global poverty and determine the international poverty line.
The median’s new best friend? Introducing SDG 10.2.1
Growth in median income is a frequently used measure of societal progress. In contrast to its more popular cousin, growth in mean income, or growth in GDP per capita, the median reveals the progress of the ‘typical’ person in society and is not vulnerable to what happens at the tails of the distribution. If only the top of the distribution sees progress, the mean will increase but the median will not.
Updating the World Bank’s Societal Poverty Line with the 2017 Purchasing Power Parities
The poverty lines traditionally used by the World Bank are absolute poverty lines. An example of this is the international poverty line of $1.90 (2011 PPPs), soon to be updated to $2.15 with the 2017 PPPs. An absolute poverty line is fixed (in constant dollars), allowing one to measure poverty against the same benchmark over time and across countries. At the same time, when one compares national poverty lines across the world, they typically increase in real value as their economies get richer.
Not all data are created equal: why the adoption of international data standards pays off
In 2010, Ghana made international headlines when its nominal GDP grew 63% overnight as a result of adopting revised standards for its system of national accounts. When Nigeria rebased its GDP in 2014 for the first time in 24 years—likewise in an effort to comply with international data standards—its economy almost doubled, making it Africa’s largest. These large revisions aside, discussions of international data standards are typically not what keeps most people at the edge of their seats.
March 2020 global poverty update from the World Bank: New poverty estimates for 2018
The March 2020 global poverty update added more than 200 new surveys to PovcalNet, bringing the total number of surveys to more than 1,900. New poverty estimates for the reference year 2018 are now included for some regions, and the previously published global and regional estimates from 1981 to 2015 have been revised, reflecting data revisions and the availability of new data. More details on the revisions can be found in Atamanov et al. (2020).
The center of gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic is heading to the global south
Over the past several months, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted from China to Italy to the United States. One way to spatially visualize this shifting gravity of the pandemic is by using an idea and method from Quah (2011) to track how the center of gravity of a particular variable is shifting over time.
Are we there yet? Many countries don't report progress on all SDGs according to the World Bank's new Statistical Performance Indicators
Make a bet: Will we celebrate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2030? Or will we analyze why the world community fell short of its ambitions? A possible answer is that we will lack the data to do either. The 17 SDGs lay out a uniquely ambitious and comprehensive agenda for global development until 2030. However, achieving these goals is not the only challenge. Monitoring progress towards these goals represents an enormous task for countries’ statistical systems.
When is there enough data to create a global statistic?
Open a newspaper and chances are you will find some global statistic referring to how the world is faring: “Global growth is projected to recover”, “the number of refugees worldwide is set to increase for the third straight year”, “global CO2 emissions are reaching an all-time high.” The demand for global statistics is perhaps best embodied in the Sustainable Development Goals, whose 231 indicators for the most part can be and are aggregated to the global level.
How do the 2017 PPPs change our understanding of global and regional poverty?
In May 2020, the International Comparison Program (ICP) published new purchasing power parities (PPPs) for the 2017 reference year. PPPs are the principal data used in the measurement of global poverty to convert household income or consumption expenditure into a common currency, while accounting for price differences across countries.
Updating the international poverty line with the 2017 PPPs
The World Bank will start using new poverty lines in fall 2022. The decision follows the release in 2020 of new purchasing power parities (PPPs) by the International Comparison Program (ICP). PPPs are the principal data used to convert different currencies into a common, comparable unit and account for price differences across countries.
Pandemic, prices, and poverty
Photo: Eric Valenne geostory/Shutterstock The world’s poorest have faced two extraordinarily difficult years. The pandemic has caused unprecedented reversals in poverty reduction that are further exacerbated by rising inflation and the effects of the war in Ukraine. We estimate that these combined crises will lead to an additional 75 million to 95 million people living in extreme poverty in 2022, compared to pre-pandemic projections.
April 2022 global poverty update from the World Bank
The April 2022 update to the newly launched Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) presents new global poverty estimates for 2018 and revises previously published estimates, as a result of newly available survey data and several changes to the underlying data (see this document for more details). The global poverty rate (at the US$1.90 poverty line) in 2018 is 8.6 percent, down from 9.1 in 2017, equivalent to a decline by 28 million poor people between the two years.
How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty? - The Journal of Economic Inequality
References Anand, S., Segal, P.: What do we know about global income inequality? J. Econ. Lit. 46(1), 57–94 (2008) Article Google Scholar Atamanov, A., Jolliffe, D.M., Lakner, C., Prydz, E.B. Purchasing power parities used in global poverty measurement. World Bank Global Poverty Monitoring Technical Note, no. 5 (2018) Atamanov, A., Lakner, C., Mahler, D.G., Tetteh Baah, S., Yang, J.: The effect of new PPP estimates on global poverty: A first look.
The impact of COVID-19 on poverty and inequality: Evidence from phone surveys
Photo: gorkhe1980/Shutterstock As we approach the third year of the COVID-19 crisis, we deepen our understanding of the pandemic’s impact on poverty and inequality across the globe. One of the many changes prompted by COVID was in the way which we collect data. Conducting household surveys—our main method of data collection before the pandemic—was suddenly not possible in most developing countries, due to social distancing requirements.
Creating an Integrated National Data System - Lessons from Estonia, Ghana, and Mexico
Image from the 2021 WDR: Data for Better Lives chapter 9 What goals are good goals? Psychology tells us that good goals are challenging, yet attainable. Easy goals don’t sufficiently challenge us to improve our performance, while unattainable goals tend to demoralize us and result in poor performance. The sweet spot is in the middle: choose a goal that’s tough yet achievable, and performance improves by directing attention, mobilizing effort, and increasing persistence.
Is green growth more effective at reducing poverty than gray growth?
Image: Shutterstock.com This blog has benefited from discussions with Christoph Lakner, James Cust, Philip Wollburg, and Umar Serajuddin. The Sustainable Development Goals, through their very name, suggest that development may occur in an unsustainable manner. If sustainability and development always went hand in hand, there would be no need to add a reference to sustainability.
Tracking Academic Data Use around the World
With 189 member countries, staff from more than 170 countries, and offices in over 130 locations, the World Bank Group is a unique global partnership: five institutions working for sustainable solutions that reduce poverty and build shared prosperity in developing countries.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Inequality and Poverty
With 189 member countries, staff from more than 170 countries, and offices in over 130 locations, the World Bank Group is a unique global partnership: five institutions working for sustainable solutions that reduce poverty and build shared prosperity in developing countries.
A Kuznets curve for intergenerational mobility
In the 1950s, that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between inequality and development. As countries developed, inequality would increase until a certain tipping point, after which it would start to fall again. Although this hypothesis is highly contested, the inverted U-curve is featured in most introductory textbooks on development economics.
COVID-19 leaves a legacy of rising poverty and widening inequality
The global economy is beginning to bounce back from the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, with growth of 5.6 percent expected for 2021. But this recovery is not being experienced equally. Poorer countries are contending with a deeper, longer-lasting crisis that has increased global poverty and is reversing recent trends of shrinking inequality. The result is that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is largest for the world’s poorest.
Is COVID-19 increasing global inequality?
No country has been able to fully avoid the economic consequences of the global pandemic, but some have been hit more than others. Do the countries hardest hit tend to be situated in the bottom of the global income distribution? If so, the pandemic would be increasing inequality between countries. In this blog post, we explore this topic by comparing the income losses at different places of the global income distribution.
Updated estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global poverty: Turning the corner on the pandemic in 2021?
More than a year into the pandemic, there is still much we don’t know concerning its impact on global poverty. Though high-frequency phone surveys have helped gain a broad understanding of the economic consequences of the pandemic, the collection of detailed, household surveys needed to understand its impact on poverty has largely been put on hold.
How much should governments spend on data?
Image from Chapter 2 of the 2021 World Development Report: Data for Better Lives Some years ago, researchers documented that marathon finishing times follow a special pattern. Many runners finish just ahead of 3:30 hours, 4:00 hours, and other 30-minute thresholds while few people finish just after those thresholds. There is no physiological reason to believe that runners are much more capable of finishing 42.2 kilometers in three hours and fifty-nine minutes than in four hours and one minute.
March 2021 global poverty update from the World Bank
The March 2021 global poverty update from the World Bank revises the previously published global and regional estimates from 1981 to 2017. In summary, the updated poverty estimates continue to show a decrease in global poverty up until 2017, and to 2018/2019 for some regions, which predates the reversal projected for 2020 as a result of COVID-19. For the regions with sufficient population coverage, the 2018 estimates are updated and new poverty estimates for 2019 are added.
When the consequences of conflicts last generations: Intergenerational mobility in Iraq and Vietnam
The immediate effects of conflict are starkly clear. They include deaths and injuries, population displacement, the destruction of assets, and the disruption of social and economic systems. But one day the fighting stops, and life in conflict-affected areas gradually returns to normal. Or does it? How long do the economic and welfare effects of armed conflict typically persist? In particular, how long will these effects constrain growth and limit countries’ ability to reduce poverty?
Updated estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global poverty: Looking back at 2020 and the outlook for 2021
This analysis has been updated based on new growth estimates. The updated analysis is available here. As the new year brings some hope for the fight against COVID-19, we are looking back and taking stock of the effect of the pandemic on poverty in 2020. In October 2020, using the June vintage of growth forecasts from the Global Economic Prospects, we estimated that between 88 and 115 million people around the globe would be pushed into extreme poverty in 2020.
September 2020 global poverty update from the World Bank: New annual poverty estimates using the revised 2011 PPPs
The global poverty update from the World Bank published last month presents new global poverty estimates for 2017 and revises the previously published global and regional estimates for earlier years (for details see Castaneda et al., 2020, PovcalNet). The main change of this update is the adoption of the revised 2011 PPPs for the estimation of global poverty, which were released by the International Comparison Program in May 2020.
Why have the 2011 PPPs been revised and what does it mean for estimates of poverty?
In May 2020, the International Comparison Program (ICP) revised its 2011 purchasing power parities (PPPs), which were originally published in 2014, together with publishing its most recent 2017 PPPs. This was the first time that previously published ICP PPPs were revised (further details on the ICP Revision Policy).
What could stop the world from ending poverty? Think fragility and conflict
How seriously do fragility, conflict, and violence threaten the global goal of reducing extreme poverty to 3% by 2030? A new report, “Fragility and Conflict: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Poverty,” argues that the threat is critical, and suggests directions for action to confront it. At the turn of the millennium, 1 in 5 of the world's extreme poor lived in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS).
The impact of COVID-19 on global poverty under worsening growth and inequality
The Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report 2020 (PSPR2020) reported that COVID-19 was likely to push between 88 and 115 million people into extreme poverty—those living under $1.90-a-day—around the globe in 2020 (also see our related blog). These estimates were based on growth forecasts from the Global Economic Prospects (GEP) from June. We will update these numbers following the next GEP release in January 2021.
Projecting global extreme poverty up to 2030: How close are we to World Bank’s 3% goal?
We have recently estimated that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to push between 88 million and 115 million people into extreme poverty in 2020 (for further details see the recently published Poverty and Shared Prosperity report). This translates into a global poverty rate—the share of the world’s population living on less than $1.90 per day—between 9.1% and 9.4% this year.
Updated estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global poverty: The effect of new data
In our previous post, we estimated that COVID-19 was responsible for 71 million to 100 million additional people falling into extreme poverty in 2020 (measured using the international poverty line of $1.90/day). Since the time of this analysis, we have integrated new data into PovcalNet—an online tool provided by the World Bank for estimating global poverty.
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