960 million or 72% of the world’s poor live in middle income countries

Popular understandings of global poverty are based on the false premise that poor people all live in poor countries. In fact, three-quarters of the world’s 1.3 billion poor people reside in middle-income countries such as India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia. Only a quarter live in low-income countries, largely in Africa. This is a dramatic change from just two decades ago when 93% of poor people lived in low-income countries.

A new development narrative is therefore needed that is about poor people, rather than poor countries. This narrative – as Andy Sumner argues in his article in The Broker – will need to focus on tackling inequality with a new multilateralism and shared responsibility rather than focusing exclusively on an absolute lack of resources in the poorest countries.

Feel free to join the discussion, please do so by sending your comment or contribution to [email protected] or by commenting on individual blog-posts.