The distribution of poverty in poor countries

ECONOMISTS Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo describe the results of a number of household surveys they carried out in developing countries in their new book “Poor Economics”. Their data allow comparisons of the full distribution of consumption per person in a number of developing countries, in addition to the more commonly available figures on the fraction of people living on less than $2 a day. In some of these countries, many of those who consume enough to ensure they do not count as “poor” are in fact only a bit better off than those who do. Nearly 80% of the 30.6% of Bangladeshis who consume more than $2 a day in fact consume only between $2 and $4 a day—still very little indeed. A little bit of bad luck—a single bad harvest, for example—may be all it takes to send them back to living below the poverty line.