The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classification

With respect to the official thresholds of development in terms of GNI per capita, all developing countries have made remarkable progress; between 1987 and 2015 the number of Low Income Countries has decreased from 42 to 31, while that of High Income Countries has increased from 25 to 79. This rosy...

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Main Author: Gianni Vaggi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Associazione Economia civile 2017-03-01
Series:PSL Quarterly Review
Subjects:
Online Access:http://ojs.uniroma1.it/index.php/PSLQuarterlyReview/article/view/13886/13644
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author Gianni Vaggi
author_facet Gianni Vaggi
author_sort Gianni Vaggi
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description With respect to the official thresholds of development in terms of GNI per capita, all developing countries have made remarkable progress; between 1987 and 2015 the number of Low Income Countries has decreased from 42 to 31, while that of High Income Countries has increased from 25 to 79. This rosy picture is largely due to the specific way in which the thresholds have been updated. This paper revises the thresholds according to the increase in the world income per capita during those 28 years. The revised thresholds give a less optimistic description of the economic improvements that occurred during these 28 years, but they provide a better classification of the changes in relative income per capita levels. According to the World Bank’s classification, middle-income countries host the majority of the poor. With the methodology proposed in this paper this is still true, but only because India marginally belongs to the LMICs group. The paper discusses the implication of the proposed thresholds for the extreme poverty line, which in 2015 has been updated to 1.90 US$ a day at 2011 Purchasing Power Parity prices.
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spelling doaj.art-1035ff2ffa24456fa0d61708b634ad432022-12-22T03:46:45ZengAssociazione Economia civilePSL Quarterly Review2037-36352037-36432017-03-0170280598210.13133/2037-3643_70.280_4The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classificationGianni VaggiWith respect to the official thresholds of development in terms of GNI per capita, all developing countries have made remarkable progress; between 1987 and 2015 the number of Low Income Countries has decreased from 42 to 31, while that of High Income Countries has increased from 25 to 79. This rosy picture is largely due to the specific way in which the thresholds have been updated. This paper revises the thresholds according to the increase in the world income per capita during those 28 years. The revised thresholds give a less optimistic description of the economic improvements that occurred during these 28 years, but they provide a better classification of the changes in relative income per capita levels. According to the World Bank’s classification, middle-income countries host the majority of the poor. With the methodology proposed in this paper this is still true, but only because India marginally belongs to the LMICs group. The paper discusses the implication of the proposed thresholds for the extreme poverty line, which in 2015 has been updated to 1.90 US$ a day at 2011 Purchasing Power Parity prices.http://ojs.uniroma1.it/index.php/PSLQuarterlyReview/article/view/13886/13644national incomeaidpovertycountries classificationpoor countries
spellingShingle Gianni Vaggi
The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classification
PSL Quarterly Review
national income
aid
poverty
countries classification
poor countries
title The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classification
title_full The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classification
title_fullStr The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classification
title_full_unstemmed The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classification
title_short The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classification
title_sort rich and the poor a note on countries classification
topic national income
aid
poverty
countries classification
poor countries
url http://ojs.uniroma1.it/index.php/PSLQuarterlyReview/article/view/13886/13644
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