Publication: Where They Live: District-Level Measures of Poverty, Average Consumption, and the Middle Class in Central Asia
Loading...
Files in English
502 downloads
Date
2019-07
ISSN
Published
2019-07
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Rapid economic growth over the past two decades lifted millions of people out of poverty in Central Asia. But the uneven spread of prosperity left many communities struggling to catch up. To support lagging regions within countries, each of the region's five national governments has made convergence a pillar of their development strategies. An imperfect patchwork of household surveys allows policy makers to monitor progress and identify some spatial disparities. But these share an important weakness: none of the official surveys in the region is representative when disaggregated to the level of districts. Islands of poverty and prosperity are thus lost in the averages -- leading to targeting inaccuracies that can slow the pace of poverty reduction. This study partially addresses the challenge. The accuracy of key welfare indicators is sharpened well beyond what could be achieved for any country alone by: i) unifying survey data from across the region and ii) applying the techniques of small-area estimation. The results provide detailed measures of welfare that in turn can be disaggregated for each district in Central Asia. Comprehensive maps of where the poor and the middle class live are presented, for the entire region and individually for each country.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Seitz, William. 2019. Where They Live: District-Level Measures of Poverty, Average Consumption, and the Middle Class in Central Asia. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8940. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32060 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Asymmetric Bank Distress Amplifier of Recessions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-11)One defining feature of financial crises, evident in U.S. and international data, is asymmetric bank distress—concentrated losses on a subset of banks. This paper proposes a model in which shocks to borrowers’ productivity dispersion lead to asymmetric bank losses. The framework exhibits a “bank distress amplifier,” exacerbating economic downturns by causing costly bank failures and raising uncertainty about the solvency of banks, thereby pushing banks to deleverage. Quantitative analysis shows that the bank distress amplifier doubles investment decline and increases the spread by 2.5 times during the Great Recession compared to a standard financial accelerator model. The mechanism helps explain how a seemingly small shock can sometimes trigger a large crisis.Publication From Tailwinds to Headwinds(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-10)The first quarter of the twenty-first century has been transformative for emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). These economies now account for about 45 percent of global GDP, up from about 25 percent in 2000, a trend driven by robust collective growth in the three largest EMDEs—China, India, and Brazil (the EM3). Collectively, EMDEs have contributed about 60 percent of annual global growth since 2000, on average, double the share during the 1990s. Their ascendance was powered by swift global trade and financial integration, especially during the first decade of the century. Interdependence among these economies has also increased markedly. Today, nearly half of goods exports from EMDEs go to other EMDEs, compared to one-quarter in 2000. As cross-border linkages have strengthened, business cycles among EMDEs and between EMDEs and advanced economies have become more synchronized, and a distinct EMDE business cycle has emerged. Cross-border business cycle spillovers from the EM3 to other EMDEs are sizable, at about half of the magnitude of spillovers from the largest advanced economies (the United States, the euro area, and Japan). Yet EMDEs confront a host of headwinds at the turn of the second quarter of the century. Progress implementing structural reforms in many of these economies has stalled. Globally, protectionist measures and geopolitical fragmentation have risen sharply. High debt burdens, demographic shifts, and the rising costs of climate change weigh on economic prospects. A successful policy approach to accelerate growth and development should focus on boosting investment and productivity, navigating a difficult external environment, and enhancing macroeconomic stability.Publication Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world’s population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income countries. The estimates indicate that the negative association between income mobility and inequality (known as the Great Gatsby Curve) continues to hold across this wider range of countries. The database also reveals a positive association between income mobility and national income per capita, suggesting that countries achieve higher levels of intergenerational mobility as they grow richer.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)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.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Dynamically Identifying Community Level COVID-19 Impact Risks(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12-09)The authors build a new database of highly spatially disaggregated indicators related to risk and resilience to the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Uzbekistan. The outbreak disproportionately affects groups, the elderly, the poor, those living in areas under lockdown, and families who rely on remittance income are all examples of groups that are especially vulnerable to effects of the crisis in Uzbekistan. The authors assemble indicators summarizing concentrations of these and other risk factors at the lowest administrative level in the country, neighborhood-sized units called mahallas. Local official administrative statistics (published for the first time in this study) are combined with monthly panel survey data from the ongoing Listening to the Citizens of Uzbekistan project to produce an overall risk index, which is decomposable by dimension or risk factor to inform targeted and issue-specific responses. We then demonstrate a process for updating key indicators (such as employment or remittance flows) on a monthly basis using linked survey data combined with small area estimation techniques. These neighborhood-level results are intended to improve resource allocation decisions and are particularly relevant in Uzbekistan where local representatives are responsible for implementing key social and economic programs to respond to the outbreak.Publication When and Where Do We See Regional Poverty Reduction and Convergence?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01)In the past decade, Turkey has experienced a notable level of poverty reduction at all levels (extreme poor, poor, and vulnerable). The steady decline in poverty was also resilient to the decline in gross domestic product per capita growth during the crisis. However, although poverty convergence was strong before the financial crisis, there was an absence of regional convergence afterward. This paper analyzes poverty trends, poverty convergence, economic mobility, and the determinants of poverty reduction at the regional level over the period 2006–13. The analysis finds that agricultural growth in the east was an important contributor to Turkey's regional poverty reduction. In additionally, employment growth in the services sectors boosted poverty reduction throughout the entire country. From a fiscal perspective, the amount of per capita central spending is also linked to poverty reduction, although more strongly for regions in the west.Publication Nigeria : Where Has All the Growth Gone?(Washington, DC, 2013-08-30)This policy note will focus on the poverty trends in Nigeria using the National Living Standard Survey (NLSS) 2004 and Harmonized Nigeria Living Standard Survey (HNLSS) 2010 only. In the last decade, Nigeria has enjoyed a stable and sustained growth in a context of responsible macroeconomic management, economic stability, democracy, and reform. Nonetheless, results from household surveys conducted during the same period seem to be at odd with this particularly positive growth story: poverty declined only by two percentage points between 2004 and 2010. Poverty levels may be lower and poverty reduction faster than the official estimates suggest. Simulations and sensitivity check confirm this hypothesis and call for additional work to consolidate poverty analysis in Nigeria. An important step in this direction is increasing the collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics regarding data collection and data management. There are, however, several results from this policy note that seems to stand on solid ground. First, the historical disparities between the North and the South (more specifically South-West) appear to have remained unchanged. Second, inequality explains part of the limited poverty reduction. Third, there is evidence of structural changes in the economy. Labor absorption provides interesting insights. Larger fractions of the working age population have moved out of agriculture and joined the self-employed sector. To make faster progress in poverty reduction, Nigeria needs a game changing strategy if substantial progress has to be made in meeting the global goals of reducing extreme poverty to three percent in 2030.Publication Where are Iraq’s Poor?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06-23)Measuring poverty and tracking it over time is an important prerequisite to national economic planning. Absence of official data on household expenditure or poverty line hampered the ability of Iraqi policymakers to understand the extent of the problem, analyze their causes, and devise appropriate policies. Iraq household socioeconomic survey (IHSES) 2006-07 was the first survey of its kind since 1988 to cover all 18 governorates. The survey collected rich information on income, expenditure, employment, housing, education, health, and other socioeconomic indicators. Building on the experience of the first IHSES survey and using international best practice on sampling and questionnaire design and survey implementation, the second round of IHSES was fielded in 201-/13. To fill the data gap, a larger survey was designed to collect information on correlates of household welfare like demographic characteristics, education, occupation, housing, and assets and estimate small-area poverty rates using projection methods. This report presents results from the exercise, the first of its kind for Iraq. Poverty mapping not only provides a visual representation of poverty at subnational levels, it also reveals pockets of poverty and islands of prosperity where they exist. This knowledge is useful to inform decisions on policy design and targeting of development projects and programs.Publication India - Living Conditions and Human Development in Uttar Pradesh : A Regional Perspective(Washington, DC, 2010-04)Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India, has 170 million inhabitants who represent 16.2 percent of India's population. Uttar Pradesh (UP) is classified as one of the 'lagging states of India' for its slow growth, low human development indicators and high concentration of the poor. UP occupies an important position in India because of its size and as a determinant of the country's overall progress. UP has continuously slipped behind India as a whole. Growth or the lack of it has a mirror image in poverty trends. In the 1970s, UP's poverty level was almost at the national average and actually came below the all-India level in 1977-78. Poverty climbed again in 1983. Since the 1990s, slow growth in industry and services has been responsible for UP's lag. The report is organized as: it starts with an assessment of trends in growth, poverty, and inequality presents in chapter one. It notes a slower reduction in poverty in urban areas and in the Western and Eastern regions. Chapter two presents a poverty profile, its non-income dimensions and silent features of the dynamics of poverty. Chapter three presents the underpinnings of growth and reduction in poverty, the report examines patterns of employment, wages and migration patterns in UP. Chapter four focuses on the latent potential of the agricultural sector. Chapters five and six examine trends, challenges and achievements in education and health indicators. Chapter seven addresses access to social assistance programs. Chapter eight presents possible solutions for improving delivery of services.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication Women, Business and the Law 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-04)Women, Business and the Law 2024 is the 10th in a series of annual studies measuring the enabling conditions that affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies. To present a more complete picture of the global environment that enables women’s socioeconomic participation, this year Women, Business and the Law introduces two new indicators—Safety and Childcare—and presents findings on the implementation gap between laws (de jure) and how they function in practice (de facto). This study presents three indexes: (1) legal frameworks, (2) supportive frameworks (policies, institutions, services, data, budget, and access to justice), and (3) expert opinions on women’s rights in practice in the areas measured. The study’s 10 indicators—Safety, Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Childcare, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension—are structured around the different stages of a woman’s working life. Findings from this new research can inform policy discussions to ensure women’s full and equal participation in the economy. The indicators build evidence of the critical relationship between legal gender equality and women’s employment and entrepreneurship. Data in Women, Business and the Law 2024 are current as of October 1, 2023.Publication Global Economic Prospects, June 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-10)The global economy is facing another substantial headwind, emanating largely from an increase in trade tensions and heightened global policy uncertainty. For emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), the ability to boost job creation and reduce extreme poverty has declined. Key downside risks include a further escalation of trade barriers and continued policy uncertainty. These challenges are exacerbated by subdued foreign direct investment into EMDEs. Global cooperation is needed to restore a more stable international trade environment and scale up support for vulnerable countries grappling with conflict, debt burdens, and climate change. Domestic policy action is also critical to contain inflation risks and strengthen fiscal resilience. To accelerate job creation and long-term growth, structural reforms must focus on raising institutional quality, attracting private investment, and strengthening human capital and labor markets. Countries in fragile and conflict situations face daunting development challenges that will require tailored domestic policy reforms and well-coordinated multilateral support.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication World Bank Annual Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-25)This annual report, which covers the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, has been prepared by the Executive Directors of both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA)—collectively known as the World Bank—in accordance with the respective bylaws of the two institutions. Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, has submitted this report, together with the accompanying administrative budgets and audited financial statements, to the Board of Governors.