From deprivation to distribution : is global poverty becoming a matter of national inequality?

Abstract

This paper asks the following question: does the shift in global poverty towards middle-income countries (MICs) mean that global poverty is becoming a matter of national inequality? This paper argues that many of the world’s extreme poor already live in countries where the total cost of ending extreme poverty is not prohibitively high as a percentage of GDP. And in the not-too-distant future, most of the world’s poor will live in countries that do have the domestic financial scope to end at least extreme poverty and, in time, moderate poverty. This will likely pave the way for addressing poverty reduction as primarily a domestic issue rather than primarily an aid and international issue; and thus a (re)framing of poverty as a matter of national distribution and national social contracts and political settlements between elites, middle classes and the poor. Keywords: poverty; inequality; distribution; low-income countries; middle-income countries.