Andy Sumner

Andy Sumner
Nationality British
Field International development
Influences Simon Kuznets, W. Arthur Lewis, Amartya Sen, Dudley Seers, Hans Singer

Andy Sumner is an inter-disciplinary development economist, specializing in global poverty and inequality with a particular focus on middle-income and emerging economies.[1] He has been listed by Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and Devex website’s ‘Global Development Leaders’ for his work on the ‘new bottom billion’ about poverty in middle-income countries.[2][3]

Sumner is Co-Director of King's International Development Institute, King's College London, and a Reader in International Development.[4] He holds associate positions at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford, and the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.[5][6]

Prior to King’s he was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. From 1998 to 2014 Sumner served as council member of the British Development Studies Association (DSA) and from 2008 to 2014 he was UK representative and Vice President of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).[7] Sumner is Deputy Editor and an Editorial Board Member of the journal Global Policy and has written a number of scholarly articles and books.[8] A central theme of his work is the persistence of poverty in middle-income countries and the implications of national income distribution for poverty.[9][10][11]

Work

Sumner’s research focuses on poverty theory and the causes of poverty both at a global level and with a regional focus on Southeast Asia and Indonesia in particular.[12] His work challenges the orthodox view that absolute poverty is necessarily minimal or ‘residual’ at higher levels of per capita income.

In recent years his research has focused on the fact that about a billion people or three-quarters of the poor live in middle-income countries which he termed the “new bottom billion”. This finding raised questions about the distributional patterns of economic growth, the divorce of much foreign aid from world poverty and about the dominant country analytical categories. It has contributed to a changed understanding of the geographical distribution of global poverty.[13]

Sumner is a regular contributor to academic journals, including World Development, and was co-editor of Palgrave MacMillan's book series Rethinking International Development.[14] Together with Alex Cobham he popularized the Palma ratio as a new measure of income or consumption inequality.[15][16][17][18]

His work on poverty in middle-income countries has been discussed in media outlets such as The Economist, The Guardian and the Voice of America. His work on measuring inequality and the Palma Ratio has been discussed by BBC News and the Washington Post.

Publications

Selected Books

Selected Articles

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Andy Sumner - Biography". King's College London. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  2. ↑ "The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers 2011". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  3. ↑ "London's 40 under 40 International Development Leaders". Devex. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  4. ↑ "Andy Sumner - Biography". King's College London. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  5. ↑ "Research Associates and Advisors - Andy Sumner". OPHI. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  6. ↑ "Experts - Andy Sumner". CGD. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  7. ↑ "Curriculum Vitae - Andy Sumner" (PDF). IDS. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  8. ↑ "Andy Sumner - Deputy Executive Editor". Global Policy. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  9. ↑ Andy, Sumner. "The New Bottom Billion: What If Most of the World’s Poor Live in Middle-Income Countries?" (PDF). CGD Brief. CGD. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  10. ↑ "Dr Andy Sumner - The New Bottom Billion". Global Policy. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  11. ↑ "The New Bottom Billion". IDS. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  12. ↑ "Andy Sumner - Research". King's College London. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  13. ↑ "International aid, but not as we know it". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  14. ↑ "Rethinking International Development series". Palgrave MacMillan. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  15. ↑ "Map: How the world’s countries compare on income inequality (the U.S. ranks below Nigeria)". The Washington Post. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  16. ↑ "Who, What, Why: What is the Gini coefficient?". BBC News. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  17. ↑ "On inequality, let’s do the Palma (because the Gini is so last century)". Oxfam. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  18. ↑ "Palma vs Gini: measuring post-2015 inequality". The Broker. Retrieved 4 May 2015.

External links

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