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Ravallion, Martin

Development Research Group, World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Welfare Economics; Public Economics; Economics of Poverty; Economics of Inequality

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Development Research Group, World Bank

Last updated February 1, 2023

Biography

Martin Ravallion is Acting Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, a position he has held since June 2012. Prior to that he was Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank—the Bank’s research department. He has held various positions in the Bank since he joined as an Economist in 1988 and he has worked across multiple sectors and in all Bank regions. Prior to joining the Bank, Martin was on the faculty of the Australian National University (ANU). He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics (LSE), and has taught economics at LSE, Oxford University, the Australian National University, Princeton University and the Paris School of Economics. Martin’s main research interests over the last 25 years have concerned poverty and policies for fighting it. He is well-known for his work on measuring global poverty and for his work linking economic policies to the welfare of poor people, including the evaluation of anti-poverty programs. He has advised numerous governments and international agencies on these topics, and he has written extensively on them, including four books and over 200 papers in scholarly journals and edited volumes. Martin currently serves on the Editorial Boards of ten economics journals, is a Senior Fellow of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development and a Founding Council Member of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality. In 2011 he received the John Kenneth Galbraith Award of America’s Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 144

How Long Will It Take to Lift One Billion People Out of Poverty?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01) Ravallion, Martin

Alternative scenarios are considered for reducing by one billion the number of people living below $1.25 a day. The low-case, "pessimistic," path to that goal would see the developing world outside China returning to its slower pace of growth and poverty reduction of the 1980s and 1990s, though with China maintaining its progress. This path would take another 50 years or more to lift one billion people out of poverty. The more optimistic path would maintain the (impressive) progress against poverty since 2000, which would instead reach the target by around 2025-30. This scenario is consistent with both linear projections of the time series data and non-linear simulations of inequality-neutral growth for the developing world as a whole.
Knowledgeable Bankers? The Demand for Research in World Bank Operations

(Taylor and Francis, 2013-03-08) Ravallion, Martin

Development impact calls for knowledgeable development practitioners. How then do the operational staff of the largest development agency value and use its own research? Is there an incentive to learn and does it translate into useful knowledge? A new survey reveals that the bulk of the World Bank's senior staff value the Bank's research for their work, and most come to know it well, although a sizable minority have difficulty accessing research to serve their needs. Another group sees little value to research for their work and does not bother to find out about it. Higher perceived value is reflected in greater knowledge about research, though there are frictions in this process. Staff working on poverty, human development and economic policy tend to value and use Bank research more than staff in the more traditional sectors of Bank lending – agriculture and rural development, Energy and Mining (EM), transport and urban development; the latter sectors account for 45% of lending but only 15% of staff are highly familiar with Bank research. Without stronger incentives for learning and more relevant and accessible research products, it appears likely that this lag in demand for research by the traditional sectors will persist.
Rich and Powerful? Subjective Power and Welfare in Russia

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2002-06-30) Lokshin, Michael ; Ravallion, Martin

Does "empowerment" come hand-in-hand with higher economic welfare? In theory, higher income is likely to raise both power and welfare, but heterogeneity in other characteristics and household formation can either strengthen or weaken the relationship. Survey data on Russian adults indicate that higher individual and household incomes raise both self-rated power and welfare. The individual income effect is primarily direct, rather than through higher household income. There are diminishing returns to income, though income inequality emerges as only a minor factor reducing either aggregate power or welfare. At given income, the identified covariates have strikingly similar effects on power and welfare. There are some notable differences between men and women in perceived power.
China's (Uneven) Progress Against Poverty

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-09) Ravallion, Martin ; Chen, Shaohua

While the incidence of extreme poverty in China fell dramatically over 1980-2001, progress was uneven over time and across provinces. Rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor, though migration to urban areas helped. The pattern of growth mattered. Rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth. Agriculture played a far more important role than the secondary or tertiary sources of gross domestic product (GDP). Rising inequality within the rural sector greatly slowed poverty reduction. Provinces starting with relatively high inequality saw slower progress against poverty, due both to lower growth and a lower growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Taxation of farmers and inflation hurt the poor. External trade had little short-term impact.
Competing Concepts of Inequality in the Globalization Debate

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-03) Ravallion, Martin

Differing value judgments in measuring inequality underlie the conflicting factual claims about how much poor people have shared in the economic gains from globalization. Opponents in the debate differ in the extent to which they care about relative inequality versus absolute inequality, vertical inequalities versus horizontal inequalities, and whether they are consistently individualistic in assessing the extent of inequality. The value judgments on these issues made by both sides need greater scrutiny if the globalization debate is to move forward.
Pro-Poor Growth: A Primer

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-03) Ravallion, Martin

These days it seems that almost everyone in the development community is talking about "pro-poor growth." What exactly is it, and how can we measure it? Is ordinary economic growth always "pro-poor growth" or is that some special kind of growth? And if it is something special, what makes it happen? The author first reviews alternative approaches to defining and measuring "pro-poor growth." He then analyzes evidence on whether growth is pro-poor, what factors make it more pro-poor (including the role played by both initial inequality and changing inequality), and whether the factors that make the distribution of the gains from growth pro-poor come at a cost to growth. The author identifies some priorities for future research.
Has India’s Economic Growth Become More Pro-Poor in the Wake of Economic Reforms?

(World Bank, 2011-05-31) Datt, Gaurav ; Ravallion, Martin

The extent to which India's poor have benefited from the country's economic growth has long been debated. A new series of consumption-based poverty measures spanning 50 years, including a 15-year period after economic reforms began in earnest in the early 1990s, is used to examine that issue. Growth has tended to reduce poverty, including in the postreform period. There is no robust evidence of more or less poverty responsiveness to growth since the reforms began, although there are signs of rising inequality. The impact of growth is higher when using poverty measures that reflect distribution below the poverty line and when using growth rates calculated from household surveys rather than national accounts. The urban-rural pattern of growth matters for the pace of poverty reduction. However, in marked contrast to the period before the reforms, urban economic growth in the period after the reforms has brought significant gains to the rural poor as well as the urban poor.
Long-term Impacts of Household Electrification in Rural India

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06) van de Walle, Dominique ; Ravallion, Martin ; Mendiratta, Vibhuti ; Koolwal, Gayatri

India's huge expansion in rural electrification in the 1980s and 1990s offers lessons for other countries today. The paper examines the long-term effects of household electrification on consumption, labor supply, and schooling in rural India over 1982-99. It finds that household electrification brought significant gains to consumption and earnings, the latter through changes in market labor supply. It finds positive effects on schooling for girls but not for boys. External effects are also evident, whereby households without electricity benefit from village electrification. Wage rates were unaffected. Methodologically, the results suggest sizeable upward biases in past estimates of the gains from electrification associated with how past analyses dealt with geographic effects.
How Have the World's Poorest Fared Since the Early 1980s?

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-06) Chen, Shaohua ; Ravallion, Martin

The authors present new estimates of the extent of the developing world's progress against poverty. By the frugal $1 a day standard, they find that there were 1.1 billion poor in 2001-almost 400 million fewer than 20 years earlier. Over the same period, the number of poor declined by more than 400 million in China, though half of this decline was in the first few years of the 1980s. The number of poor outside China rose slightly over the period. A marked bunching up of people between $1 and $2 a day has also emerged. Sub-Saharan Africa has become the region with the highest incidence of extreme poverty and the greatest depth of poverty. If these trends continue, then the aggregate $1 a day poverty rate for 1990 will be halved by 2015, though only East and South Asia will reach this goal.
Looking Beyond Averages in the Trade and Poverty Debate

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-11) Ravallion, Martin

There has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness, as one aspect of "globalization." The author views the issue through both "macro" and "micro" empirical lenses. The macro lens uses cross-country comparisons and aggregate time series data. The micro lens uses household-level data combined with structural modeling of the impacts of specific trade reforms. The author presents case studies for China and Morocco. Both the macro and micro approaches cast doubt on some wide generalizations from both sides of the globalization debate. Additionally the micro lens indicates considerable heterogeneity in the welfare impacts of trade openness, with both gainers and losers among the poor. The author identifies a number of covariates of the individual gains. The results point to the importance of combining trade reforms with well-designed social protection policies.