Data on Poverty and Inequality

What are good indicators of poverty? 

The share of people below the poverty line, an indicator based on consumption (or income) levels, is often used (see Measuring Poverty), but other indicators are needed to capture other dimensions of poverty. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) specify a number of relevant indicators; see About the Goals.

What are current trends in poverty indicators? 

• Read the Overview of trends in poverty over time. 
• For trends in the MDG indicators, see  Millennium Development Goals: Achieving the Goals. 
• For data on the MDG indicators, see Millennium Development Goals: Data.

Where can I find more detailed information on key poverty indicators?

• Consumption/income poverty based on the PPP $1 and PPP $2 per day poverty lines
  • Global and regional poverty trends [552kb PDF] (Chapter 1 of Global Economic Prospects 2009).
  • World Development Indicators 2009 (see Table 2.7)
  • PovcalNet is an interactive computational tool that allows you to replicate the calculations made by the World Bank in estimating the extent of absolute poverty in the world ($1 a day), as well as to calculate the poverty measures for different international poverty lines and/or with alternative country groupings. Details on the data sources and methods used in deriving the Bank's estimates are given in the paper "How Have the World's Poorest Fared Since the Early 1980s?" by Chen and Ravallion (2004) [232Kb PDF]. The paper, "Absolute Poverty Measures for the Developing World, 1981-2004", gives the latest update of the estimates. See the Publications section for more papers by Ravallion and others on this topic.
• Consumption/income poverty based on national poverty lines 
  • World Development Indicators 2009 (see Table 2.7)
  • PovcalNet contains data on the share of people living below the national poverty line by country for the years when household surveys are available.
• Consumption/income inequality 
  • World Development Indicators 2009 (see Table 2.9)
  • The Measuring Income Inequality Database, which contains data for 138 countries, over the period 1890-1996 (with data on Gini coefficients and cumulative quintile shares), was put together in 1997 by Klaus Deininger and Lyn Squire. 
  • Data Resources of the Poverty and Inequality Advisory Unit, Inter-American Development Bank. A web guide to poverty estimates by country, links to other sites, and the household survey initiative (MECOVI/ISLC).
  • The World Income Inequality Database (WIID) provides cross-country and time-series data on changes in income inequality over the period 1950-98, with a particular focus on the period since 1980 for 149 countries. It expands on the 1997 Deininger-Squire database of the World Bank. This is a joint project of the UNDP and the UN University/World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER).
• Education indicators
  • See the EdStats database.
• Gender statistics and indicators
  • See the GenderStats database.
• Health indicators 
  • The HNPStats database (Health, Nutrition, and Population statistics) offers country data sheets showing summary indicators of health status, health determinants, and health finance. 
  • Data on health indicators by quintile are available in the HNP and Poverty Country Information Sheets. These data come from Demographic and Health Surveys (see below) and quintiles are based on assets owned. Each country report is accompanied by a set of technical annexes explaining the definitions and methods used in the statistics' preparation
• Data on children 
  • See UNICEF's Child Info databases focusing on progress since the World Summit for Children.
• More social indicators
  • See the Social Indicators website of the UN's Statistics Division

Where can I find country studies on poverty? 

• The World Bank's Poverty Analysis site contains a collection of Poverty Assessments and other related country documents, including poverty assessments, country economic memorandums, poverty updates, social development reports, poverty notes, and living standards studies. The poverty analyses are organized by region.
• The India poverty project assembled detailed nationwide and state-level statistics from 1950 to 1994 on expenditures, National Accounts, prices, wages, population, and others. The complete data are now available online.
• The UNDP Millennium Development Goals website includes country reports on MDG indicators.

Related links:

Most of the poverty and inequality data on this page come from household surveys.

• See Types of Data for a brief description of different types of data sources.
• See Accessing Surveys for information on how to access household level data for different countries.
• See Tools for a series of instruments to help calculate poverty and inequality indices on the basis of household survey data.

Back to Data and Tools