Anthony B. Atkinson - Measuring Poverty around the World

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2. John Micklewright and Andrea Brandolini
3. Franois Bourguignon
4. Nicholas Stern

• Franois Bourguignon
• Nicholas Stern

FIGURES

1. .Twenty-five poorest countries in 2015, measured by GNI per capita in PPP dollars
2. .World Bank estimates of the extent of global poverty ($1.90 a day poverty line), 1990 to 2013
3. .Poverty reduction by region ($1.90 a day line), 1981 to 2013
4. .History of development of sixty countries according to World Bank GNI per capita (Atlas method) classification, 1987 to 2017
5. .Absolute and relative poverty in global poverty measurement
6. .GNI per capita for the worlds countries, 2015: PPP and Atlas method compared
7. .Child nutrition indicators in Bangladesh, 1990 to 2014
8. .Global poverty rate and poverty gap: World Bank estimates based on the $1.90 a day line, 1990 to 2013
9. .Nonmonetary and monetary poverty rates for seventy-two countries (per cent)
10. .Pacific islands: National estimates of poverty rates published by the Pacific Community (basic needs poverty) and World Bank estimates ($1.90 line)
11. .Rural and urban population of China, 1981 to 2014 (millions)
12. .Number of people in poverty in rural China, 1978 to 2017 (millions)
13. .African countries: Persons living in households below $1.90 poverty line (per cent)
14. .African countries: Persons in households below national poverty line and persons in households below $1.90 poverty line (per cent)
15. .Latin American and Caribbean countries: Persons in households below $1.90 poverty line (per cent)
16. .Latin American and Caribbean countries: Persons in households below national moderate poverty line and persons in households below $1.90 line (per cent)
17. .Mexico and Nicaragua poverty rates with the $1.90 line (per cent): Income versus consumption
18. .The persistence of poverty in the United States and Europe (per cent poor)
19. .Poverty lines for estimating global poverty with (a) gradient after a switching point of 30 per cent and (b) gradient after a switching point of 50 per cent

TABLES

1. .Dimensions in official Multidimensional Poverty Indices in Latin America
2. .Nutrition indicators for Sustainable Development Goal 2 (zero hunger)
3. .Indicators of deprivation contrasted: Global MPI and EU Social Indicators
4. .Multi-topic household surveys with global or multi-regional coverage
5. .Linking household survey and national accounts concepts of consumption
6. .Dimensions, indicators, deprivation cutoffs, and weights in the Global MPI
7. .How have poverty and income inequality changed in Anglo-Saxon countries and Ireland?
8. .Global poverty in 2013

BOXES

1. .The World Bank classification of countries
2. .The combined poverty checklist: Concepts and data
3. .2015 Sustainable Development Goals

I am not sure that I will be able to finish, but it is quite interesting to read all the different country studies for places that I scarcely knew existed (like the Solomon Islands!). I keep an atlas on my desk! I am very impressed with the overall quality of the work being produced in statistical offices around the world, and feel that there is a lot of scope for mutual learning.

This is an excerpt from the last email that Tony Atkinson sent one of us before his death on 1 January 2017. The words are telling of his personality. They illustrate the intellectual curiosity that drove him to find and understand data. They show his respect for craftsmanshipbe that of the official statisticians of the Solomon Islands (a country ranked 156 out of 188 countries according to the 2017 Human Development Index) or the carpenter who had fixed his bookshelves. They reveal an enthusiasm and a commitment to research that his illness could not restrain.

Sadly, Tony was indeed unable to finish. But before his death he asked us to take his manuscript forward to publication. He left an incomplete first draft. We quickly decided that completion of the book was impossible. We were unsure of how Tony planned to develop his lines of argument in the second half of the book and the details of his intentions for the large amount of data that he had collected. We might have imposed our own ideas, but we were clear that the book should remain Tonys rather than become a book coauthored by us.

With the agreement of Tonys family, we decided to bring the book to a state where it could be published while remaining incomplete. We have added a significant amount of material in , adding and updating text and data, writing reports for several countries, and drawing graphs for others, although nineteen of the reports remain largely skeletons without the flesh that Tony would have supplied. Our edits and additions to the main text and to the national reports are not visible to the reader, but on occasion we have added notes in which we comment explicitly as editors. We have also written a longer explanatory note at the start of the national reports. In places there is cross-referencing from one chapter to another that Tony had drafted, but the passage to which the reader is referred is missing; we have retained these statements, as they indicate the links that Tony was aiming to incorporate.

We decided not to make an extensive search of relevant literature in order to fill any gaps in the main text. In particular, we have not consulted Martin Ravallions 2016 book The Economics of Poverty, referred to by Tony in s discussion of rich countries, despite being familiar with the material. Our purpose has been to carry out the necessary editorial work to allow readers to appreciate the many insights contained in the draft left by Tony without nurturing an illusion that the book was almost finished. This is a book worth reading, but readers must be aware that it is an unfinished book.

The book grew out of Tonys work chairing the Commission on Global Poverty, set up by the World Bank in 2015, and his work on the Commissions report,