It seems intuitive that poor people would live in poor countries, but the combination of rapid economic growth in China and India with those countries’ gigantic populations means that’s no longer the case. Today, most poor people live in middle income countries according to an analysis from Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz for Brookings which also notes that many of the global poor live in states that are “fragile” in terms of their stability:
I think one way of reading this chart is also as underscoring the value of a functioning state. Low income countries that are stable have tended to graduate to middle income status pretty quickly.
Previous in TP Yglesias
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.