Person:
Jolliffe, Dean

Development Economics Data Group, The World Bank
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Food security, Education economics, Health economics, Data collection methods, Measuring Poverty
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Development Economics Data Group, The World Bank
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Last updated: June 5, 2025
Biography
Dean Jolliffe is a lead economist in the Development Data Group at the World Bank. He is a member of the Living Standards Measurement Study team and co-lead of the team that works on global poverty measurement (PovcalNet). Previously, he worked in the Research Group and the South Asia region of the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was a research economist with the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an assistant professor at Charles University Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education in Prague, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, and a postdoctoral fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Dean holds appointments as a research fellow with the Institute for the Study of Labor, as a co-opted council member of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, and as a fellow of the Global Labor Organization. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University.
Citations 344 Scopus

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 37
  • Publication
    Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05) Foster, Elizabeth; Jolliffe, Dean Mitchell; Ibarra, Gabriel Lara; Lakner, Christoph; Tettah-Baah, Samuel
    Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.
  • Publication
    A New Distribution Sensitive Index for Measuring Welfare, Poverty, and Inequality
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-22) Kraay, Aart; Lakner, Christoph; Özler, Berk; Decerf, Benoit; Jolliffe, Dean; Sterck, Olivier; Yonzan, Nishant
    Simple welfare indices such as mean income are ubiquitous but not distribution sensitive. In contrast, existing distribution sensitive welfare indices are rarely used, often because they are difficult to explain and/or lack intuitive units. This paper proposes a simple new distribution sensitive welfare index with intuitive units: the average factor by which individual incomes must be multiplied to attain a given reference level of income. This new index is subgroup decomposable with population weights and satisfies the three main definitions of distribution sensitivity in the literature. Variants on this index can be used as distribution sensitive poverty measures and as inequality measures, with the same simple intuitive units. The properties of the new index are illustrated using the global distribution of income across individuals between 1990 and 2019, as well as with selected country comparisons. Finally, the index can be used to define the “prosperity gap” as a proposed new measure of “shared prosperity,” one of the twin goals of the World Bank.
  • Publication
    Assessing the Impact of the 2017 PPPs on the International Poverty Line and Global Poverty
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-21) Tetteh Baah, Samuel Kofi; Jolliffe, Dean Mitchell; Mahler, Daniel Gerszon; Lakner, Christoph; Atamanov, Aziz
    Purchasing power parity exchange rates (PPPs) are used to estimate the international poverty line (IPL) in a common currency and account for relative price differences across countries when measuring global poverty. This paper assesses the impact of the 2017 PPPs on the nominal value of the IPL and global poverty. The analysis indicates that updating the $1.90 IPL in 2011 PPP dollars to 2017 PPP dollars results in an IPL of approximately $2.15—a finding that is robust to various methods and assumptions. Based on an updated IPL of $2.15, the global extreme poverty rate in 2017 falls from the previously estimated 9.3 to 9.1 percent, reducing the count of people who are poor by 15 million. This is a modest change compared with previous updates of PPP data. The paper also assesses the methodological stability between the 2011 and 2017 PPPs, scrutinizes large changes at the country level, and analyzes higher poverty lines with the 2017 PPPs.
  • Publication
    Identifying the Poor: Accounting for Household Economies of Scale in Global Poverty Estimates
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-10) Tetteh Baah, Samuel Kofi; Jolliffe, Dean
    Estimates of the number of people living in extreme poverty, as reported by the World Bank, figure prominently in international development dialogue and policy. An assumption underpinning these poverty counts is that there are no economies of scale in household size—a family of six needs three times as much as a family of two. This paper examines the sensitivity of global estimates of extreme poverty to changing this assumption. The analysis rests on nationally representative household surveys from 162 countries covering 98 percent of the population estimated to be in extreme poverty in 2017. The paper compares current-method estimates with a constant-elasticity scale adjustment that divides total household consumption or income not by household size but by the square root of household size. While the regional profile of extreme poverty is robust to this change, the determination of who is poor changes substantially—the poverty status of 270 million people changes. The paper then shows that the measure that accounts for economies of scale is significantly more correlated with a set of presumed poverty covariates (years of schooling, literacy, asset index, working in agriculture, access to electricity, piped drinking water, and improved sanitation).
  • Publication
    What Makes Public Sector Data Valuable for Development?
    (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2023-04-14) Jolliffe, Dean; Veerappan, Malarvizhi; Kilic, Talip; Wollburg, Philip
    Data produced by the public sector can have transformational impacts on development outcomes through better targeting of resources, improved service delivery, cost savings, increased accountability, and more. Around the world, the amount of data produced by the public sector is increasing rapidly, but we argue the full potential of data to improve development outcomes has not been realized yet. We outline 12 features needed for data to generate greater value for development and present case studies substantiating these features. We argue that a key reason why the transformational value of data has not yet been realized is that suboptimal data—data not satisfying these 12 features—are being supplied. The features are that the data should be of adequate spatial and temporal coverage (complete, frequent, and timely), should be of high quality (accurate, comparable, and granular), should be easy to use (accessible, understandable, and interoperable), and should be safe to use (impartial, confidential, and appropriate).
  • Publication
    April 2022 Update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP): What's New
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04) Castaneda Aguilar, R. Andres; Dewina, Reno; Diaz-Bonilla, Carolina; Edochie, Ifeanyi N.; Fujs, Tony H. M. J.; Jolliffe, Dean; Lain, Jonathan; Lakner, Christoph; Ibarra, Gabriel Lara; Mahler, Daniel G.; Meyer, Moritz; Montes, Jose; Moreno Herrera, Laura L.; Mungai, Rose; Newhouse, David; Nguyen, Minh C.; Sanchez Castro, Diana; Schoch, Marta; Sousa, Liliana D.; Tetteh-Baah, Samuel K.; Uochi, Ikuko; Viveros Mendoza, Martha C.; Wu, Haoya; Yonzan, Nishant; Yoshida, Nobu
    The April 2022 update to the newly launched Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) involves several changes to the data underlying the global poverty estimates. Some welfare aggregates have been changed for improved harmonization, and the CPI, national accounts, and population input data have been updated. This document explains these changes in detail and the reasoning behind them. Moreover, a large number of new country-years have been added, bringing the total number of surveys to more than 2,000. These include new harmonized surveys for countries in West Africa, new imputed poverty estimates for Nigeria, and recent 2020 household survey data for several countries. Global poverty estimates are now reported up to 2018 and earlier years have been revised.
  • Publication
    Under What Conditions Are Data Valuable for Development?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Veerappan, Malarvizhi; Jolliffe, Dean; Kilic, Talip; Mahler, Daniel Gerszon; Wollburg, Philip
    Data produced by the public sector can have transformational impacts on development outcomes through better targeting of resources, improved service delivery, cost savings in policy implementation, increased accountability, and more. Around the world, the amount of data produced by the public sector is increasing at a rapid pace, yet their transformational impacts have not been realized fully. Why has the full value of these data not been realized yet This paper outlines 12 conditions needed for the production and use of public sector data to generate value for development and presents case studies substantiating these conditions. The conditions are that data need to have adequate spatial and temporal coverage (are complete, frequent, and timely), are of high quality (are accurate, comparable, and granular), are easy to use (are accessible, understandable, and interoperable), and are safe to use (are impartial, confidential, and appropriate).
  • Publication
    Mind the Gap: Disparities in Assessments of Living Standards Using National Accounts and Household Surveys
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09) Prydz, Espen Beer; Jolliffe, Dean; Serajuddin, Umar
    Estimates of average per capita consumption and income from national accounts differ substantially from corresponding measures of consumption and income from household surveys. Using a new compilation of more than 2,000 household surveys matched to national accounts data, this study finds that the gaps between the data sources are larger and more robust than previously established. Means of household consumption estimated from surveys are, on average, 20 percent lower than corresponding means from national accounts. The gap with gross domestic product per capita is nearly 50 percent. The gaps have increased in recent decades and are largest in middle-income countries, where annualized growth rates for consumption surveys are systematically lower than national accounts growth rates. The paper shows that the gaps in measures across these two sources have implications for assessments of economic growth, poverty, and inequality. The study finds that typical survey measures of consumption and income may exaggerate poverty reduction and underestimate inequality.
  • Publication
    Toward Successful Development Policies: Insights from Research in Development Economics
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) Artuc, Erhan; Cull, Robert; Dasgupta, Susmita; Fattal, Roberto; Filmer, Deon; Gine, Xavier; Jacoby, Hanan; Jolliffe, Dean; Kee, Hiau Looi; Klapper, Leora; Kraay, Aart; Loayza, Norman; Mckenzie, David; Ozler, Berk; Rao, Vijayendra; Rijkers, Bob; Schmukler, Sergio L.; Toman, Michael; Wagstaff, Adam; Woolcock, Michael
    What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13 short, nontechnical briefing notes prepared in response to this request, summarizing a selection of major insights in development economics in the past decade. The notes synthesize evidence from recent research on how policies should be designed, implemented, and evaluated, and provide illustrations of what works and what does not in selected policy areas.
  • Publication
    March 2021 PovcalNet Update: What’s New
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03) Arayavechkit, Tanida; Atamanov, Aziz; Barreto Herrera, Karen Y.; Belghith, Nadia Belhaj Hassine; Castaneda Aguilar, R. Andres; Fujs, Tony H.M.J.; Dewina, Reno; Diaz-Bonilla, Carolina; Edochie, Ifeanyi N.; Jolliffe, Dean; Lakner, Christoph; Mahler, Daniel; Montes, Jose; Moreno Herrera, Laura L.; Mungai, Rose; Newhouse, David; Nguyen, Minh C.; Sanchez Castro, Diana M.; Schoch, Marta; Sharma, Dhiraj; Simler, Kenneth; Swinkels, Rob; Takamatsu, Shinya; Uochi, Ikuko; Viveros Mendoza, Martha C.; Yonzan, Nishant; Yoshida, Nobuo; Wu, Haoyu
    The March 2021 update to PovcalNet involves several changes to the data underlying the global poverty estimates. Some welfare aggregates have been changed for improved harmonization, and the CPI, national accounts, and population input data have been updated. This document explains these changes in detail and the reasoning behind them. In addition to the changes listed here, a large number of new country-years have been added, resulting in a total number of surveys of more than 1,900. Moreover, this update includes important revisions to the historical survey data and for the first time, poverty estimates based on imputed consumption data.