Intro

In 1981, 44% of the world’s population were living in extreme poverty. By 2019, that number had fallen to 9%. This seems like a good news story, but how did it happen?

Tom Vogl of UC San Diego is one of the authors of a paper called simply, “How Poverty
Fell”. In it, they use surveys to track the progress out of poverty of individuals and
generations, to discover whether this progress has been driven by individuals and families becoming less poor over their lives or by successive generations who are less likely to be born into poverty. Has the progress been driven by women in the workplace, by government support, or by the move out of agriculture? And, significantly, do those who move out of poverty stay in that position or, is it, as Tom tells Tim Phillips, “Like climbing a slippery slope”?

Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/methods-measurement/how-has-global-poverty-fallen

Read the paper: https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~pniehaus/papers/how_poverty_fell.pdf