Publication: Eradicating Poverty in Fragile States: Prospects of Reaching the "High-Hanging" Fruit by 2030
Date
2014-08
ISSN
Published
2014-08
Author(s)
Burt, Alison
Hughes, Barry
Milante, Gary
Abstract
As the world approaches the target year
of the Millennium Development Goals and passes into the new,
post-2015 era, the development community has made a call for
a new international development goal of eradication of
extreme poverty by 2030. How feasible is that? For most of
the developing world, the goal seems ambitious, yet
achievable -- but what about the prospects for fragile
states in which an increasingly large share of the global
poor will live (estimated at nearly four in 10 by 2030)?
This paper presents a base case scenario with the
International Futures model that forecasts a 32 percent
poverty rate for fragile states by 2030 given current
conditions and trends. The paper considers alternative
scenarios to identify a range of possible outcomes. In the
most optimistic scenario, the paper steps beyond the search
for realistic policy levers and simply assumes exceptional
economic growth and decreased inequality for fragile states.
This extremely optimistic scenario produces a forecast of a
20 percent extreme poverty rate for this group of countries.
The paper then explores the effects of improved institutions
and improved security in fragile states and of a set of
poverty reduction policies that would be conditional on
security and good governance to be effective. The resulting
aggressive but reasonably attainable poverty rate in fragile
states is 24 percent in 2030. With newly revised Purchasing
Power Parity values (rebased to 2011 by the International
Comparison Project in May of 2014), the 2030 forecasts of
fragile state poverty rates are lower by 5 to 6 percent
across all scenarios, still leaving them significantly above
the 3 percent threshold for poverty eradication.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Burt, Alison; Hughes, Barry; Milante, Gary. 2014. Eradicating Poverty in Fragile States: Prospects of Reaching the "High-Hanging" Fruit by 2030. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7002. © World Bank Group, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19392 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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