In September 2000, the international aid community set the millennium development goals (MDG). The main poverty reduction goal was outlined as the reduction of absolute poverty to half the level prevailing in 1990 i.e. 15 percent for the head-count ratio in 2015. This study documents that for a variety of methods, this MDG goal was met at the time of the millennium declaration in 2000, and no later than 2002. Several bits of evidence have been gathered to show why the conventional wisdom – that the world is “on track” to reduce poverty to 15 percent by 2015 – is manifestly wrong. It is noteworthy that the MDG target has been met by even the “conservative” upper-bound poverty estimate method of the World Bank.
The study of miracles, particularly of the East Asian variety, is today a veritable growth industry. Most developing country policy makers, if not all, would like to know the secret, and emulate the success. The question remains - is East Asian success really a mystery and can India be the next miracle?
This book is about India’s economic development since independence, but especially during the last two decades. A central concern of policy makers for over fifty years has been the alleviation of absolute poverty. Between 1950-1980, the economy barely grew at about 1 percent per capita per annum . Not surprisingly, poverty did not decline by much. In 1951-52, the first year of the National Sample Survey (NSS), the head-count ratio of poverty in India was deemed to be close to 45 percent of the population. Some thirty two years later, in 1983, the poverty ratio had stayed “constant” at 43 percent. However, since then, there has been a sharp fall in poverty with the level for 1999-2000 being “close” to 26 percent.
Determinants of growth, use of exchange rate, particularly Chinese exchange rate policy. Side products – explain acceleration in Indian growth in the eighties, the need for a new Plaza accord (a different yen, Chinese yuan).
This paper examines the data and methods used to estimate world inequality and world poverty since 1950. It was found that regardless of method used, world inequality reversed a more than a century old trend during the globalization period,loosely defined as the post 1980 years. Consumption growth of the poor also accelerated during globalization, and such growth was in excess of that of the average person. Poverty declined at close to 1.5 percentage points a year, a statistic not affected much by use of different PPP data, or use of different methods, including the method adopted by the official “keeper” of world poverty statistics, the World Bank. Indeed, a striking result obtained is that world poverty, according to the World Bank method, data, and definitions, was close to 15 percent in 2002, a level that is meant to be the millennium development goal target for 2015. (JEL O15, O20, O47,O5)
