TY  - JOUR
AU  - Sala-i-Martin,Xavier
AU  - Pinkovskiy,Maxim
TI  - African Poverty is Falling...Much Faster than You Think!
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15775
PY  - 2010
Y2  - February 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15775
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15775.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Xavier Sala-i-Martin
Department of Economics
Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, 1005
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212/854-7055
Fax: 212/854-8059
E-Mail: xs23@columbia.edu

Maxim Pinkovskiy
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
E-Mail: maximpinkovskiy@yahoo.com
AB  - The conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. Using the methodology of Pinkovskiy and Sala-i-Martin (2009), we estimate income distributions, poverty rates, and inequality and welfare indices for African countries for the period 1970-2006. We show that: (1) African poverty is falling and is falling rapidly; (2) if present trends continue, the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time; (3) the growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead of increasing it; (4) African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic. All classes of countries, including those with disadvantageous geography and history, experience reductions in poverty. In particular, poverty fell for both landlocked as well as coastal countries; for mineral-rich as well as mineral-poor countries; for countries with favorable or with unfavorable agriculture; for countries regardless of colonial origin; and for countries with below- or above-median slave exports per capita during the African slave trade.
ER  -