Expertise
global poverty and inequality, inclusive growth, structural transformation, the future of foreign aid, Southeast Asia
Bio
Andy Sumner is a Professor of International Development at King’s College London.
He is Director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Global Challenges Strategic Research Network on Global Poverty and Inequality Dynamics.
His research focuses on issues of inequality and economic development in middle-income developing countries and Southeast Asia in particular.
He has twenty years’ international research experience using both qualitative and quantitative methods and has published extensively, including 12 books and fifty journal papers and book chapters.
He was appointed at King’s in 2012 and was co-founder of the King’s International Development Institute, which later became the Department of International Development.
He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, Washington, DC and at UNU-WIDER; and a Visiting Fellow Padjadjaran University, Bandung, Indonesia and a Research Associate of the Department of International Development, University of Oxford.
Media Contact
Sean Bartlett
sbartlett@cgdev.org
In the News
December 12, 2018
September 4, 2018
July 23, 2018
Working Groups
High-res photo
More From Andy Sumner
July 20, 2020
Publication
In a post-COVID-19 context, what type of economic growth will most likely end global poverty and reduce inequality? We conclude that in the aftermath of the pandemic, countries will need to pursue historically unprecedented growth paths in order to achieve the poverty and inequality Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
January 7, 2019
Publication
Who are the world’s poor? This paper presents a new global profile of multidimensional poverty using three specifications of multidimensional poverty.
August 5, 2016
Blog Post
Amartya Sen’s famous study of famines found that a nation’s people died not because of a food shortage but because some people lacked entitlements to that food. In a new CGD working paper with Chris Hoy, we ask if a similar situation is now the case for global poverty: are national resources available but not being used to end poverty?
August 2, 2016
Publication
This paper argues that approximately three-quarters of global poverty, at least at the lower poverty lines, could now be eliminated—in principle—via redistribution of nationally available resources. Reducing global poverty at lower poverty lines is increasingly a matter of national inequality.
Pages
September 13, 2012
Publication
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.
December 9, 2014
Blog Post
The policy debate around whether foreign aid—now $138.5 billion a year—works has been polarized between the “Oh yes it does” camp and those who respond “Oh no it doesn’t.” (Christmas pantomime anyone?)
October 26, 2012
Publication
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.
March 14, 2011
Blog Post
Development is easy, right?
August 4, 2014
Publication
Many existing classifications of developing countries are dominated by income per capita (such as the World Bank’s low, middle and high income thresholds), thus neglecting the multidimensionality of the concept of ‘development’. Even those deemed to be the main ‘alternatives’ to the income-based classification have income per capita heavily weighted within a composite indicator.
September 16, 2013
Publication
In this paper we explore the Palma and corroborate the findings that the middle does indeed hold over time and through various stages of tax and transfers. Further, we find that the Gini is almost completely “explained” by only two points of the distribution: the same income shares which determine the Palma.
Pages
July 20, 2020
Publication
In a post-COVID-19 context, what type of economic growth will most likely end global poverty and reduce inequality? We conclude that in the aftermath of the pandemic, countries will need to pursue historically unprecedented growth paths in order to achieve the poverty and inequality Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
January 7, 2019
Publication
Who are the world’s poor? This paper presents a new global profile of multidimensional poverty using three specifications of multidimensional poverty.
August 2, 2016
Publication
This paper argues that approximately three-quarters of global poverty, at least at the lower poverty lines, could now be eliminated—in principle—via redistribution of nationally available resources. Reducing global poverty at lower poverty lines is increasingly a matter of national inequality.
September 8, 2015
Publication
This paper considers the effectiveness and efficiency of global growth, as a route to poverty reduction, since 1990 and then demonstrates the redistributive challenges implicit in various poverty lines and scenarios.
May 11, 2015
Publication
This paper makes new estimates of global poverty and inequality in 2012 using both ‘old’, 2005 and ‘new’, 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP) price data in order to assess systematically what difference PPP data makes to the estimates.
August 4, 2014
Publication
Many existing classifications of developing countries are dominated by income per capita (such as the World Bank’s low, middle and high income thresholds), thus neglecting the multidimensionality of the concept of ‘development’. Even those deemed to be the main ‘alternatives’ to the income-based classification have income per capita heavily weighted within a composite indicator.
September 16, 2013
Publication
In this paper we explore the Palma and corroborate the findings that the middle does indeed hold over time and through various stages of tax and transfers. Further, we find that the Gini is almost completely “explained” by only two points of the distribution: the same income shares which determine the Palma.
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