| Perspectivas para terminar con la extrema pobreza para el año 2030. © The Brookings Institution |
Laurence Chandy; Natasha Ledlie and Veronika Penciakova The Final Countdown: Prospects for Ending Extreme Poverty by 2030. Bonn, Germany © The Brookings Institution, Policy Paper 2013-04, April, 2013, 21 p. Between 1990 and 2010, the share of the population of the developing world living in extreme poverty was ,cut in half. This fulfilled the first and foremost Millennium Development Goal (MDG1a) five years ahead of ,schedule. Moreover, it would appear to bring the end of extreme poverty within reach. If the same rate of global ,progress is sustained, extreme poverty will be eliminated in 2030. In other words, if it took 20 years to lift half ,the world’s poor above the poverty line, a further 20 years should take care of the other half. This has rightfully ,got people excited. In the words of Bono, “The zero zone…is just around the corner”. What are reasonable expectations for how poverty will unfold over the coming years? How feasible is it for extreme poverty to be eliminated by 2030? And what factors will determine progress toward this goal? This paper attempts to answer these questions. We develop a number of scenarios based on some carefully derived assumptions to better understand the future trajectory of global poverty. Predicting poverty is a fool’s errand so it would be wrong to place too much stock on poverty estimates derived from any one scenario. Nevertheless, we are able to make some reasonably strong statements about the prospects for ending extreme poverty and its sensitivity to different factors. Extreme poverty is defined here by the narrowly construed, but widely used, consumption-based poverty line of $1.25 a day measured in 2005 international prices. This is the poverty line used in MDG1a. In the remainder of this paper, all references to poverty refer to extreme, consumption-based poverty. We are acutely aware that the two are not the same, but drop the prefixes for the sake of brevity. Palabras Clave: pobreza extrema, Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio, ODM, países en desarrollo, 2010-2030 Clasificación JEL: I31, I32, I38, O10, Q54, Y10 |
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