We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

African Poverty is Falling…Much Faster than You Think!

I confess I have done no more than skim this paper by Maxim Pinkovskiy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Xavier Sala”i”Martin of Columbia University and NBER. I will have a go at reading it properly later. I got the link from Tim Worstall, who gets distracted from “ragging on Ritchie” into a rather moving defence of his belief that capitalism is the system that actually works when it comes to lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

I liked the title. I liked it so much I think I will type it out again.

African Poverty is Falling… Much Faster than You Think!

4 comments to African Poverty is Falling…Much Faster than You Think!

  • kentuckyliz

    So, those Nigerian phishing e-mails are working?

  • Nuke Gray

    But, if African economies start to look good, who will we have to look down on?
    I suppose there’ll always be the Muddle East.

  • There are other papers which tell very much the same story.

    http://econ.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/11950/AfricanGrowthMiracle.pdf

    “Measures of real consumption based upon the ownership of durable goods,
    the quality of housing, the health and mortality of children, the education of youth
    and the allocation of female time in the household indicate that sub-Saharan living
    standards have, for the past two decades, been growing in excess of 3 percent per
    annum, i.e. more than three times the rate indicated in international data sets.”

    Things really are getting better.

  • jso

    if you like this story then you probably won’t want to see this:

    http://urgentinvoke.com/(Link)

    looks like someone’s got a hard on against capitalism for “stealing from the third world”