The monetization of global poverty: the concept of poverty in World Bank history, 1944–90

Abstract This article traces the history of the concept of poverty within the institutional framework of the World Bank, from its inception to its establishment of the dollar-a-day global poverty threshold. The Bank's evolving conceptualization of poverty and how it related to the development process affected the policies that were advanced to boost the productivity of underdeveloped countries. Internal and external influences and constraints conditioned the Bank's approach to poverty and its alleviation from the beginning, when poverty was conceived as a political issue beyond the scope of the Bank's mandate. Separating the political implications of poverty alleviation from the Bank's development agenda was tenuous, and by the 1970s a universal, absolute concept of poverty became the focal point of Bank operations. The eventual monetization of global poverty reflected the increasingly technical nature of the Bank's development work and its need for a practical yardstick by which to measure the success of its anti-poverty policies.