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THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN POVERTY BY NUMBERS: EVIDENCE AND VANTAGE POINTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

MORTEN JERVEN
MORTEN JERVEN*
Affiliation:
Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Lund University
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Abstract

Poverty has a long history in Africa. Yet, the most conventional and influential history of African poverty is a very short one. As told by the World Bank, the history of poverty starts in the 1980s with the first Living Standard Measurement Study. This history of poverty by numbers is also a very narrow one. There is a disconnect between the theoretical and historical underpinnings of how academics understand and define poverty in Africa, and how it has been quantified in practice. While it is generally agreed that poverty is multidimensional and has certain time- and location-specific aspects, the shorthand definition for poverty is the dollar-per-day metric. This article reveals how particular types of knowledge about poverty have gained prominence and thus shaped the dominant interpretation of poverty in Africa. It argues that, based on other numerical evidence, the history of poverty in Africa could be radically different from the dominant interpretation today.

Keywords

PovertyMeasurementStatisticsWorld BankLiving StandardsReal WagesAnthropometrics
Type
Forum on Poverty
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , November 2018 , pp. 449 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

This article was presented at the conference on ‘The history of poverty in Africa: a central question?’ at the Heyman Center at Columbia University in New York, 5–6 March 2014, and formed the basis of my keynote lecture delivered at conference ‘The road to global inequality, 1945-present day: new historical perspectives,’ 3–4 November 2016, Aarhus University, Denmark. It was also presented at the African Economic History Network Meeting ‘Is Africa growing out of poverty? Africa's economic transition in historical perspective,’ 30–31 October 2015, Wageningen University. Thank you to the organisers and participants for their comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Rhiannon Stephens for organising the forum, and of course to the editors who have patiently seen through many edits of this manuscript since it was first submitted in 2015. Author's e-mail: Morten.jerven@nmbu.no.

References

1 In a keynote address, ‘Paupers. Percentiles. Precarity. Analytics for poverty studies in Africa’, paper presented at the conference ‘The history of poverty in Africa: a central question?’ Heyman Center, Columbia University, 6–7 March 2014, Jane Guyer reiterated the need to historicize poverty. She explained that her first fieldwork took her from Northern England to Northern Nigeria and remarked that at that time it was not necessarily evident that she was travelling from a case of affluence to one of extreme poverty. See her contribution to this forum. Guyer, J.I., ‘Pauper, percentile, precarity: Analytics for poverty studies in Africa’, Forum on Poverty, The Journal of African History, 59:3 (2018), 463–74Google Scholar.

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16 Target 1.A: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 a day.

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27 The level is set at $1.90 a day as of October 2015.

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39 Pim de Zwart followed the same methodology in his calculation of real wages in Cape Colony (present-day South Africa) from its founding in 1652 to unification in 1910. See Zwart, P. de, ‘Real wages at the Cape of Good Hope: a long-term perspective, 1652–1912’, Tijdschrift Voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 10:2 (2013), 28–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ronnback used trade company books to calculate wages in precolonial Gold Coast. Rönnbäck, K., ‘Living standards on the precolonial Gold Coast: a quantitative estimate of African laborers’ welfare ratios’, European Review of Economic History, 18:2 (2014), 185–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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