Poverty and shared prosperity 2018 : piecing together the poverty puzzle Paperback / softback

The share of people living in extreme poverty, as assessed by the international poverty line (currently set at USD$1.90 a day), has become one of the most prominent indicators for assessing global economic development.

It has been a central indicator for the Millennium Development Goals and is now an important indicator among the Sustainable Development Goals. The World Bank's Poverty and Shared Prosperity series is the official source for the latest global estimates of poverty and shared prosperity.

Each report also expands on a particular theme. As the world continues to make progress in eradicating poverty, efforts to monitor progress in reaching our goals will need to bring greater attention to ensuring that no one is left unaccounted for, that everyone counts - and the 2018 report explores the implications of this. Chapters 1 and 2 provide updates on the status of global poverty and the state of shared prosperity in the world.

Chapter 3 examines the usefulness of a measure of societal poverty, which takes both absolute and relative aspects of deprivation into account above a certain income level.

This measure provides a higher estimate of global poverty, which allows for the notion that participating in society may require more resources in richer countries.

Chapter 4 puts forward a multidimensional index of global poverty that builds on the consumption-based measure by adding dimensions of well-being for which market prices largely do not exist, such as health and education.

Chapter 5 addresses a key constraint in monitoring global poverty, namely, that the current state of data does not allow for the measurement of inequality within households.

This chapter describes the first efforts to overcome this constraint, with the aim of improving our understanding of the individual-level characteristics of the poor through a focus on gender.