Poverty in the Third World: ugly facts and fancy models

Abstract

Development of the type experienced by the majority of Third World countries in the last quarter century has meant, for very large numbers of people, increased impoverishment. This is the conclusion which has emerged from a series of empirical studies on trends in levels of living in the rural areas of Asia.¹ In most of the countries we have studied, the incomes of the very poor have been falling absolutely or the proportion of the rural population living below a designated ‘poverty line’ has been increasing, or both. Similar things almost certainly have been happening elsewhere, in Africa and parts of Latin America, for the mechanisms which generate growing poverty in Asia are present in greater or lesser degree in much of the rest of the underdeveloped world. Certainly there is no evidence that growth as such has succeeded in reducing the incidence of poverty.