Xavier Sala-i-Martin and Maxim Pinkovskiy write,
The poverty rate in 1970 was 0.398. That is, close to 40% of the entire population lived with less than one dollar a day in Africa in 1970. After a small decline during the first half of the seventies, the rate jumped to around 0.42 in 1985 and stayed more or less at that level for a decade. In 1995 there is a dramatic change in trend: the poverty rate began a decline that led to a ten percentage point reduction by 2006…
These results contradict the 2008 Millennium Development Goals Report (UN, 2008), which asserts that “little progress was made in reducing extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.” Our estimates disagree: the African poverty rate in 2006 was 0.318, 30% lower than in 1995 (0.428) and 28% lower than in 1990 (0.421).
Can anyone find an ungated copy of the paper to which I could link? [UPDATE: Tyler found one here.]
READER COMMENTS
David
Mar 1 2010 at 1:03pm
That is great news for Africa, but how does it jive with claims that foreign aid actually hurts the receiving countries? See, for example, the points made by this film: http://www.globalhealthforum.org/aidtoafrica.php
Have African institutions been improving significantly over the past decade or two?
blackantelope
Mar 4 2010 at 7:06am
when compiling poverty statistics is consideration given to valuing family food production or is this dollar a day simply hard cash. after all, if you include how much rural families save by growing their own supplies surely they must a least earn (for a family of lets say 5) 4-8,000 dollars a year.
i know i spend around 3,000 pounds for myself.
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