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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
50 years of development gains
>> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Overview >> 50 years of development gains Jump to Overview Sections:
>> 50 years of development gains >> Promoting democratic governance >> Driving economic growth >> Improving people's health >> Mitigating and managing conflict >> Providing humanitarian assistance >> The full measure of U.S. development assistance-official and private >> Notes >> Background papers >> References
Incomes are rising almost everywhere
Per capita GDP is the most widely used measure of well-being in a country (box table 1).
Incomes rising everywhere, except in Africa, and too slowly in the former Soviet bloc, the Arab world, and even Latin America Growth in real per capita GDP (%) Box Table 1
Total growth, 1980–2000World 29 Industrial countries 52 Developing countries 36 East Asia and Pacific 224 Europe and Central Asia 1 Latin America and the Caribbean 7 Middle East and North Africa 4 South Asia 95 Sub-Saharan Africa –16 Source: United Nations, Global Population Prospects, 2002.
But it is an incomplete proxy, because it takes into account only the aspects of life captured by market transactions. So it is inadequate for such aspects as education and life expectancy, which also contribute to welfare. Indeed, most people would probably agree that health, life expectancy, access to learning, and freedom to make one's own choices are more fundamental than income.
Another way to measure well-being (though one that still focuses on income) is to find out how many people live on less than a given income. The World Bank uses $1 a day per person as a rough benchmark to identify the world's poorest people, but only since 1987. A recent study went back farther in time. Its estimates show a rapid decline in the share of the world population living on less than $1 a day-from 55 percent in 1950 to 20 percent in 1998 (box figure 1).
For a full text description, click here.Source: 1950-80 are from Bourguignon and Morrission 2002 and 1990 and 1998 use the numbers of poor from Ravallion and Chen 2001, and world population from the United Nations World Population estimates.
Note: The main defense for combining the different sources is that the World Bank uses the same combination for a chart (p. 8) in its 2002 publication Globalization, Growth and Poverty.
Just as striking is the steady decade-by-decade decline. Moreover, the study estimates that in 1900 the share of the world's people living on less than $1 a day was 66 percent, so the reduction in the second half of the century was much more dramatic than that in the first.
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Last Updated on: October 07, 2009 |
