Global Poverty Shifting Toward Middle Income, Failed States
A new report from The Brookings Institution examining global poverty rates since 2005 notes two primary trends: poor people are increasingly found in middle-income countries and in fragile states.
Brookings notes the obvious success of the one:
Over the past decade, the number of countries classified as low-income has fallen by two fifths, from 66 to 40, while the number of middle-income countries has ballooned to over 100. This means 26 poor countries have grown sufficiently rich to surpass the middle-income threshold. Among those countries that have recently made the leap into middle-income status are a group of countries – India, Nigeria and Pakistan – containing large populations of poor people. It is their “graduation” which has brought about the apparent shift in poverty from the low-income to middle-income country category.
And troubling failure of the other: