En este reportaje para Libertad Digital, Ángel Martín se hacía eco de un trabajo reciente de Xavier Sala i Martín y Maxim Pikovsky sobre la pobreza en África: African Poverty is Falling...Much Faster than You Think!
Resumen:
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.
Este gráfico muestra la evolución de la renta per cápita y el porcentaje de personas por debajo del umbral de pobreza de 1970 a 2006:
Más referencias y gráficos sobre la reducción de pobreza en África.
Tyler Cowen destaca este otro estudio sobre el progreso africano: The African Growth Miracle. Resumen:
Measures of real consumption based upon the ownership of durable goods, the quality of housing, the health and mortality of children, the education of youth and the allocation of female time in the household indicate that sub-Saharan living standards have, for the past two decades, been growing in excess of 3 percent per annum, i.e. more than three times the rate indicated in international data sets.
