Vox: Parametric estimations of the world distribution of income
You can purchase the article the linked post reviews from the National Bureau of Economic Research for $5. Maxim Pinkovskiy, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Parametric estimations of the world distribution of income.
World poverty is falling. This column presents new estimates of the world’s income distribution and suggests that world poverty is disappearing faster than previously thought. From 1970 to 2006, poverty fell by 86% in South Asia, 73% in Latin America, 39% in the Middle East, and 20% in Africa. Barring a catastrophe, there will never be more than a billion people in poverty in the future history of the world.
World poverty is falling. Between 1970 and 2006, the global poverty rate has been cut by nearly three quarters. The percentage of the world population living on less than $1 a day (in PPP-adjusted 2000 dollars) went from 26.8% in 1970 to 5.4% in 2006 (Figure 1).
Figure 1. World poverty rates [Y axis is percent in poverty]
Although world population has increased by about 80% over this time (World Bank 2009), the number of people below the $1 a day poverty line has shrunk by nearly 64%, from 967 million in 1970 to 350 million in 2006. In the past 36 years, there has never been a moment with more than 1 billion people in poverty, and barring a catastrophe, there will never be such a moment in the future history of the world.
The starting and ending numbers are about ten percentage points lower than I've seen with some U.N. data, but the general effect is identical. The article also includes these interesting graphs.
Figure 2. World distribution of income: 1970 and 2006
Figure 3. World gini inequality
Check out the post for background on the data.
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