“…there’s plenty of room for doubt and arcane methodological debate over the numbers, with significant consequences for the way we think about the future of development. I see a nerd war approaching – wonderful!”

These views are perhaps part of the problem for the world’s poor.

It is not “arcane” to point out that the numbers are on spending, not poverty.

It is not engaging in a “nerd war” to point out that the statistics are widely abused, by the World Bank, by economists, by charities and by politicians.

They are abused in all assertions and implications that they show lack among, or benefit to, real people. In reality there is zero assessment of either specific prices faced by the poor or need.

You don’t have to be a “nerd” to see the risks in ignoring food needs, rent needs, medical needs and so on when assessing progress or policies.

Which development experts can tell the difference between important and unimportant problems in the use of statistics to guide public policy?

Everyone agrees that poverty is lack. It isn’t the level of resources whatever the needs. So resources – let alone the spending numbers – don’t measure poverty.

Pointing that out is not just contributing to a “methodological debate”, or an argument about “definitions of poverty”. It is to state categorically that what the public is being told is not what is actually compiled.

If they were poverty numbers, or “absolute poverty numbers” or “how the world’s poorest fared in the 1990s” or “consumption” in the ordinary sense of that word, or “consumption poverty” then there would have been some method for inferring from “spent more” to “got more in return” to “met needs more adequately” and perhaps to “fared better economically overall”.

There is no such methodology.

Meanwhile, governments act on the basis that they have data on which policies help the poor, when there is an obvious risk of skewing, and policies being adopted which harm people and/or cause unsustainable economic development through fundamentally unproductive transactions, by ignoring need (and assets and debts).

As can be seen in other comments on this blog, Dr Ravallion of the World Bank has failed to engage in a “methodological debate”.

He has failed to explain how he knows, for example, that there is not a significantly increased need for spending on rent in some countries.

He doesn’t have a methodology for inferring global poverty.

He has spending numbers (with imputed monetary value of own consumption and as alternates to spending, in some cases numbers on income).

He can’t say how he gets from “spent more” to “filled needs better” because he has not looked at needs.

And if the World Bank which compiles the data don’t have a methodology for inferring global poverty, or poverty comparisons for policy purposes, neither does anyone else.

Is it hard to see how this is risky for the poor?

“Failure [to avert rapid climate change] could prove catastrophic in many ways, including
unjust and unbearable further burdens of adaptation on the
weakest countries, with their negative externalities such as
forced migration and increased cross-border conflicts over
resources. In such a dead-end scenario, one minor corollary
will be the massive diversion of national effort and external
support toward spiralling needs for damage containment in
such country contexts. This fact alone would rather quickly
force development aid to refocus on disaster management
and resilience programmes, to the exclusion of many of the
priorities outlined elsewhere in this paper.”

Well, yeah, but hello?? the continued rapid economic growth in the MICs that the authors are counting on to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty between now an 2025 also seems mighty unlikely, given that all indications are that runaway climate change HAS ALREADY BEGUN.

Thinking about the impact of climate disaster on aid flows without also considering more carefully the likely impact on growth itself seems to miss the (burning) forest for the (beetle-infested) trees.

Actually I quite appreciated both your post and the article.

I’m concerned with the ODI paper’s understanding of development only being about poverty and poverty only being about money (therefore development is only about money). It is the subject of the paper and make only a cursory acknowledgement that there might be a bit more to the picture. (On a side note, if they are going to spend so much energy talking about the quantity of fiancial resources, they should probably save some breath for their quality. I thought we’d established that quality of the expenditure matters quite a bit… ie Cuba, Kerala, etc).

I’d also like to hear your thoughts on the effect of going down the CCT or basic income route. Is it a way out of public provision of services? Does that mean tiered services? The more money you have the better your services? (I realise that this is the starting point, but the CCT route doesnt seem to address equality issues). This was a slight tension in the paper: MIC governments will be doing more to address development, and CCT/direct income transfers will increase. Do these not pull in different directions?

Cheers,

Heidi