_“Nothing will come of nothing” – King Lear,_ William Shakespeare

# **1. Motivation**

Data are crucial in knowing where a country stands in terms of social and human development and can help explain which policies work and which do not work in promoting growth and eradicating poverty and other social deprivations. A very concrete feature of data is that they can make the situation of the poor visible to policy makers. The poor, who often lack political representation and agency, may remain invisible unless data reveal where they are and how they are. In this sense, lack of data on key dimensions of human and social development can be seen as a form of ‘deprivation’. This understanding of the role of data is consistent with the recent United Nations Report titled _A World That Counts_ (IEAG 2014), which argues that a lack of data can lead to a “denial of basic rights” and discusses how to mobilize a ‘data revolution’ for sustainable development.<sup>1</sup> The objective of this paper is to take stock of data on poverty and discuss goals and targets to address this data deprivation.

The availability of data is not only important to citizens and policy makers in countries, but also for the international development community. With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expiring in 2015 and the world preparing to begin monitoring the post-MDG development agenda – expected to be reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the role of data in development has received strong attention, as the call for a ‘data revolution’ to monitor the SDGs indicates (IEAG 2014). Poverty related goals were among the most prominent of the MDGs and are expected to feature prominently in the post2015 development agenda as well. The World Bank Group (WBG) recently adopted two principal goals to guide its work: (i) to end extreme poverty at the global level by 2030; and (ii) to promote “shared prosperity”: a sustainable increase in the income and well-being of the poorer segments of the population – namely the bottom 40 percent – in every country. A “world free of poverty” has been the WBG’s stated mission since its inception; however, the goal of ending extreme poverty (defined as reducing the share of the global poor to 3 percent<sup>2</sup> ) is the first time the WBG’s efforts focus around a specific target. Similarly, the goal of shared prosperity incorporates the notion of ‘growth with equality’ into the WBG’s operations quite explicitly. The frequency and quality of data on poverty and shared prosperity are central to satisfactorily monitoring these twin goals, and more significantly, to set effective policies for a country’s poverty reduction program. A recent study by Joliffe _et al_ 2014 that devotes itself entirely to the methodological and empirical issues surrounding monitoring these goals, illustrates the importance of improved data, both in terms of regularity and quality.

The starting point in monitoring progress in poverty reduction and enhancing shared prosperity is to have household consumption survey data that are not only available at reasonably frequent intervals, but are also comparable over time. The availability of such data has expanded rapidly in recent times, starting from a very low coverage of only 13 countries in the early 1990s, growing to 40 countries in 2001, and further increasing to 62 countries in 2011.

> 1 The report was prepared by the Independent Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) on the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development at the request of the United Nations Secretary General.

> 2 For more details on this see Jolliffe _et al_ (2014).

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