Middle-income countries are now home to most of the world’s extreme poor and to what Andy Sumner calls the “buoyant billions”—those living on between $2 and $10 a day. Sumner follows the trends and implications.
Most of the world’s extreme poor live in countries classified by the World Bank as middle-income countries. This apparent “poverty paradox” has important implications. For one, middle-income countries have substantially more domestic resources available to fight poverty than low-income countries do.
The paper outlines potential goal areas based on the original Millennium Declaration, the timeframe for any MDGs 2.0 and attempts to calculate some reasonable targets associated with those goal areas.
After a decade of rapid economic growth, many developing countries have attained middle-income status, but poverty reduction in these countries has not kept pace with economic growth. Most of the world’s poor—up to a billion people—now live in these new middle-income countries. These countries also carry the majority of the global disease burden.
This paper reflects on the global goal setting experience of the MDGs and what might be done differently if there is new round of MDGs after 2015.
After a decade of rapid growth in average incomes, many countries have attained middle-income country (MIC) status, while poverty hasn’t fallen as much as one might expect. As a result, there are up to a billion poor people or a ‘new bottom billion’ living not in the world’s poorest countries but in MIC. Not only has the global distribution of poverty shifted to MIC, so has the global disease burden. The paper describes trends in the global distribution of poverty, preventable infectious diseases, and health aid response to date and proposes a new MIC strategy and components, concluding with recommendations.
Most of the world’s poor no longer live in low-income countries. An estimated 960 million poor people—a new bottom billion—live in middle-income countries, a result of the graduation of several populous countries from low-income status. That is good news, but it has repercussions. Donors will have to change the way they think about poverty alleviation. They should design development aid to benefit poor people, not just poor countries, keep supporting middle-income countries, think beyond traditional aid to craft coherent development policies, and work to help create space for more inclusive policy processes in new and old MICs.