Poverty strategy and poverty measurement

"Poverty" is principally a rhetorical device. That is, there is not particular reason why an economist would want to take some particular point in the distribution of well-being and claim that concern increases across that point. I do not believe that either as a normative or positive matter a concern with "poverty" as it is usually measured is justified--that is a concern across some ultimately arbitrary threshold over and above being concerned with human well-being and more concerned for other people's well being the lower that level of well being is (in the traditional sense of a inequality averse social welfare function that satisfies all the usual criteria). But, "poverty" has become a powerful and universal rhetoric and so all arguments that would have formerly been structured as arguments for "increasing social welfare" are now rephrased as arguments for "reducing poverty."

• Who is not poor? Dreaming of a World Truly Free of Poverty. This paper, forthcoming in the World Bank Research Observer, argues that the World Bank should measure global poverty using its traditional poverty line of a 'dollar a day' as a lower bound (perhaps labeled "destitution') but also use an upper bound poverty line of roughly 'ten dollars a day' to measure "global poverty." This would imply poverty, measured on a consistent basis globally, is a much more pervasive phenomena--including 2-3 billion people as poor by a global standard.

• Indonesia: Constructing a New Strategy for Poverty Reduction. (a World Bank report I worked on, the task manager of which was Jessica Poppele). This report addresses the issue of poverty reduction in Indonesia in the year 2000--in which there is a need to restore growth but simultaneously change governance in a way that can produce both the conditions for "pro-poor" growth and deliver core public services effectively.

• Understanding Patterns of Economic Growth: Searching for Hills among Plateaus, Mountains, and Plains.

• Eating Like Which "Joneses"? An Iterative Solution to the Choice of a Poverty
  Line with Menno Pradhan, Asep Suryahadi, Sudarno Sumarto. This provides a complete methodology for setting a poverty line--with a proposed solution to the problem of the sensitivity of the poverty line to the reference group.

• The Evolution of Poverty during the Crisis in Indonesia, 1996-99 (with Asep Suryahadi, Sudarno Sumarto, and Yusuf Suharso) and Measurements of Poverty in Indonesia: 1996, 1999 and Beyond (with Menno Pradhan, Asep Suryahadi, and Sudarno Sumarto).