Attached is a first draft of a paper that is pair with another paper in progress.
This paper articulates why the combination of (a) “poverty reduction is the objective of development” and (b) the poverty line used to define and measure global poverty is (or any update of) the WDR 1990 ‘dollar a day’ poverty line is no longer a viable stance for a development organization or actor.
The basic point is that ‘dollar a day’ was always an unreasonably penurious poverty line and now, with the continued economic growth (even where not particularly rapid) nearly all developing countries have reached a point where there are very few ‘dollar a day’ poor. For instance, in the latest World Bank data Pakistan is reported as having only 4.9 percent of its population in the ‘dollar a day’ (which is now P$2.15) or “extreme” poverty. This implies that development actions that produced broad-based benefits in Pakistan would not benefit the “global poor” as only 1 in 20 Pakistanis is “poor.” This is just ridiculous (or perhaps beyond ridiculous, I am not quite sure).
The companion paper, which is underway and co-authored with Martina Viarengo examines the question “what is a plausible global upper bound poverty line?” Whereas ‘dollar a day’ is the answer to the question ‘what is the lowest a global poverty line could be?’, if one is going to use a range of poverty lines (as we argue that one must to have poverty reduction and development be synonymous) then one needs a range, a lower bound (‘dollar a day’) and an upper bound. This paper should be finished soon (in the academic sense of ‘soon’).