World Bank Miracle: How To Show Rising Poverty As Declining!
Of late, there have been several academic papers and media write-ups on the World Bank’s 2025 claim of steeply declining extreme poverty in the world, especially in Asia. It would be wonderful if this was true, but it is not true.
This claim is spurious, arising from a statistical legerdemain that the World Bank and governments have practiced for many decades, ignoring all criticism. For half a century, they have repeatedly underestimated poverty line expenditure until by now their poverty lines are so incredibly low that they do not permit human survival.