Popular understandings of global poverty are based on the false premise that poor people all live in poor countries. In fact, new estimates by the Institute of Development Studies place three-quarters of the world’s 1.3bn or so poor people in middle-income countries (MICs) such as India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia, and only a quarter live in low-income countries (LICs), largely in Africa.
This is a dramatic change from just two decades ago when 93 per cent of poor people lived in low-income countries. This change has major implications for both the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and global strategies for poverty reduction beyond 2015.
