Paul Segal

Debates on the Measurement of Global Poverty

The international communitys commitment to halve global poverty by 2015 has been enshrined in the first Millennium Development Goal. How global poverty is measured is a critical element in assessing progress towards this goal, and different researchers have presented widely-varying estimates. The chapters in this volume address a range of problems in the measurement and estimation of global poverty, from a variety of viewpoints. Topics covered include the controversies surrounding the definition of a global poverty line; the use of purchasing power parity exchange rates to map the poverty line across countries; and the quality, and appropriate use, of data from national accounts and household surveys. Both official and independent estimates of global poverty have proved to be controversial, and this volume presents and analyses the lively debate that has ensued. Contributors to this volume - Sudhir Anand, University of Oxford Paul Segal, University of Oxford Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University Martin Ravallion, Director of the Development Research Group, World Bank Sanjay G. Reddy, Barnard College, Columbia University Thomas W. Pogge, Australian National University and Yale University Surjit Bhalla, Oxus Research and Investments T. N. Srinivasan, Yale University Bettina Aten, Bureau of Economic Analysis Alan Heston, University of Pennsylvania Angus Deaton, Princeton University Robert Johnston Ivo Havinga Gisele Kamanou Viet Vu Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, The New School David Stewart Albert Berry, University of Toronto Carl Riskin, Queens College, CUNY and Columbia University Qin Gao, Fordham University Shaohua Chen, Development Economics Research Group, World Bank Suresh D .Tendulkar, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi K. Sundaram, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi David Sahn, Cornell University Stephen Younger, Cornell University

The Global Distribution of Income

This paper investigates recent advances in our understanding of the global distribution of income, and produces the first estimates of global inequality that take into account data on the incomes of the top one percent within countries. We discuss conceptual and methodological issues - including alternative definitions of the global distribution, the use of household surveys and national accounts data, the use of purchasing power parity exchange rates, and the incorporation of recently available data on top incomes from income tax records. We also review recent attempts to estimate the global distribution of income. Our own estimates combine household survey data with top income data, and we analyze various aspects of this disribution, including its within- and between-country components, and changes in relative versus absolute global inequality. Finally, we examine global poverty, which is identified through the lower end of the global distribution.This paper appears in (Eds.) A. B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon, Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2A, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2015.

Structural Change in Argentina, 1935–1960: The Role of Import Substitution and Factor Endowments

This paper investigates structural change in Argentina between 1935 and 1960, a period of rapid industrialization and of relative decline of the agricultural sector. This has been the subject of a long-running debate that has exercised Argentine economists throughout the twentieth century, and remains politically salient today. It has been argued that this this relative decline of agriculture was due to the policies of import-substituting industrialization (ISI). This was also the period, however, that directly followed the closing of the land frontier, resulting in a declining land-labor ratio as the population continued to grow. We use a stylized, dynamic three-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the period to analyze the respective effects of ISI policies and the observed changes in factor endowments on the structure of the economy. We find that the declining land-labor ratio was more important than ISI in explaining relative stagnation in agriculture. ISI gave a substantial boost to manufacturing but primarily at the expense of nontraded services, rather than of agriculture.

Structural Change in Argentina, 1935-1960

This paper investigates structural change in Argentina between 1935 and 1960, a period of rapid industrialization and of relative decline of the agricultural sector. This has been the subject of a long-running debate that has exercised Argentine economists throughout the twentieth century, and remains politically salient today. It has been argued that this this relative decline of agriculture was due to the policies of import-substituting industrialization (ISI). This was also the period, however, that directly followed the closing of the land frontier, resulting in a declining land-labor ratio as the population continued to grow. We use a stylized, dynamic three-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the period to analyze the respective effects of ISI policies and the observed changes in factor endowments on the structure of the economy. We find that the declining land-labor ratio was more important than ISI in explaining relative stagnation in agriculture. ISI gave a substantial boost to manufacturing but primarily at the expense of nontraded services, rather than of agriculture.

Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend as a Model for Reducing Global Poverty

The Alaska Permanent Fund has provided citizens of Alaska with a secure, though variable, source of cash since the first

What Do We Know about Global Income Inequality

1,000 Permanent Fund Dividend check in 1982. While the dividend has never been intended as a poverty reduction measure, such an egalitarian payment cannot help but reduce poverty. It may partly explain the fact that in 2007, before the global crisis, Alaska had the joint second lowest poverty rate of all the states of the United States, despite having only the 19th highest per capita personal income.1 Drawing on my earlier work,2 this chapter considers the extent to which a similar model of resource distribution in developing countries could contribute to reducing global poverty.