Comparing Poverty Variations: A Robustness Assessment of the MDGs’ Achievements with Respect to Poverty Alleviation

Abstract

Had poverty been halved between 1990 and 2015? In the present paper, we show how well‐known stochastic dominance tools can be used to check the robustness of claims regarding monetary poverty variations and then, using data from PovcalNet, provide a new picture of achievements with respect to poverty alleviation during the Millennium Development Goals’ era. Using a sample of 90 developing countries, we notably observe that of the 58 countries whose pace of poverty reduction was consistent with a 50 percent decrease in the headcount index over a 25‐year period, 51 countries showed distribution changes that were in line with a more general conclusion that poverty would have been halved, whatever the poverty index we use, over the same period. Our results at the global level for the period 2002–2012 also show that the same conclusion robustly holds.