This note is organized as follows. Following a brief description of the database used, the note examines trends in poverty data availability across the world. It then moves on to propose approaches to think about targets for improving poverty data availability.

# **2. Data Source**

For a comprehensive assessment of available poverty data, we use poverty statistics from the World - - - Development Indicators (WDI) database (http://data.worldbank.org/data <u>catalog/world development indicators). This database identifies 1,101 different poverty data points across developing countries</u> between 1976 and 2013, for which poverty measures were computed at national or international poverty lines.<sup>5</sup> In this note, we define the developing world as a total of 155 countries and territories, based on a union of the three popular country groupings (defined as of July 1, 2014). First, from the WDI database we take the 139 countries that are Low, Lower Middle or Upper Middle Income countries as classified by the World Bank (this is determined by GNI per capita based on the Atlas method). The WDI’s definition excludes some countries that recently graduated into High Income countries (e.g., Russian Federation, Chile, Uruguay), but where the World Bank is active. Consequently, we also draw 10 additional countries from the 144 countries listed as belonging to the World Bank’s different lending groups (classified as IDA, IBRD or Blend). Finally, we add another six countries that are in the PovcalNet database<sup>6</sup> , an online tool for poverty measurement developed by the World Bank’s Development Research Group. We exclude the wealthier countries where extreme poverty – as defined by the population living on less than $1.25 a day, measured at 2005 international prices adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) – is presumed to be zero, and for which poverty trends have not been tracked by the World Bank.

The poverty data points in the WDI database are computed from household surveys with full-fledged consumption modules that enable countries to produce reliable poverty estimates. In reality, many household surveys include consumption or income modules, but most are not suitable for producing official poverty statistics because they include too few items in the consumption or income module or they do not have wide enough geographic coverage to produce a nationally representative statistic. Moreover, the poverty estimates published in the WDI database have been scrutinized by World Bank staff and can be considered ‘fit for purpose’ for poverty monitoring.

The analysis in this note attempts to focus on poverty data points that are comparable over time, and exclude additional non-comparable poverty data points included in sources such as the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Database (http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/home) or in WDI’s non-comparable poverty estimate series. Even if poverty data are frequent and timely, if they are not comparable over time they cannot be used in poverty or shared prosperity monitoring. Non-comparability essentially arises when either the welfare aggregate (consumption or income) is measured differently across surveys from different years due to changes in survey design, or if a poverty line cannot be fixed in real terms across years due to flawed

> 5 The WDI database was last accessed on October, 2014.

> 6 All the six countries – Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia – have very small but still positive levels of extreme poverty as defined by the $1.25 (2005 PPP) International Poverty Line. With the October 2014 update, PovcalNet now includes many high income and OECD countries. What we refer to as “countries included in PovcalNet” does not include these newly added high income countries as they have never been used in the calculation of extreme poverty rate for the developing world.

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