Andy Sumner
Biographic Data
| ID | 3696394 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andy Sumner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andy |
| FAMILY NAME | Sumner |
| SIGNATURE | SUMNER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8995-7065 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 56 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 181 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Social Science Fiction and Development Studies: Expanding the Imaginative and Methodological Horizon
This survey paper examines the potential of social science fiction (SSF), an approach combining social science analysis with narrative and imaginative techniques of science fiction to explore the human consequences of global income inequalities. Although the social sciences’ influence on science fiction is well documented, the reverse, namely the methodological potential of science fiction in the social sciences, remains underexplored, partly due…
In Search of a Plan B: Like‐Minded Internationalism and the Future of Global Development
The international landscape in mid‐2025 is characterized by a retreat from liberal institutionalism, exemplified by the United States' withdrawal from the Sustainable Development Goals and its adoption of transactional, power‐based international relations, as well as its potential withdrawal from some multilateral bodies. In this context, this paper argues that traditional models of universal multilateralism are increasingly untenable, and that n…
Development Studies in the Mid-2020s: Reflecting on the Past, Looking to the Future
The 50th anniversary of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) presents an opportune moment to reflect on the current state of Development Studies as well as to consider its future trajectory. This overview paper to the special issue presents a brief history of Development Studies, elucidates the framing of the special issue the guest editors have assembled, and presents the papers in the set, which collec…
Structural transformation and regional inequality differential in Indonesia
Indonesia is one of the world's largest developing countries, as evidenced by its position as the fourth most populous nation and its status as an archipelago. Each island and province has unique endowment factors, making national-level studies insufficient to fully capture regional disparities. This study addresses this issue by examining the relationship between structural transformation and regional inequality differentials in both regional an…
Middle-income Trap or Neoliberal Trap? Industrial Policy and Ideology in the World Development Report 2024
Our article has two main objectives. First, we critically review the WDR 2024 and highlight its shortcomings. Second, we discuss alternative frameworks for explaining growth slowdowns. We argue that the Report is an oddly defensive response to the recent surge in discussions around industrial policy, especially given the World Bank's earlier openness under Justin Lin's tenure as Chief Economist. We also contend that the Report represents an attem…
Will the poverty‐related UN Sustainable Development Goals be met? New projections
In this paper, we discuss the literature and consider the historical relationship between growth and a set of poverty‐related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically extreme monetary poverty, undernutrition, stunting, child mortality, maternal mortality and access to clean water. We then make projections for 2030. We find that it is very likely that global poverty‐related SDGs will not be met and by a considerable distance. The implica…
Unity in Diversity? Reflections on Development Studies in the Mid-2020s
Development Studies (DS) demonstrates maturity as a field of inquiry marked by the half-century anniversaries of journals, institutes, and scholarly associations of DS. There is vitality in terms of the volume of research and the buoyant numbers of students engaging with the subject, though DS continues to fragment. The central argument of this paper is that contemporary DS has four broad ‘schools of thought’ which differ significantly in terms o…
Great Gatsby and the Global South: Intergenerational Mobility, Income Inequality, and Development
In the Global South economic mobility across generations or intergenerational economic mobility is in and of itself an important topic for research with consequences for policy. It concerns the 'stickiness' or otherwise of inequality because mobility is concerned with the extent to which children's economic outcomes are dependent on their parents' economic outcomes. Scholars have estimated levels of intergenerational mobility in many developed co…
The Developer's Dilemma: Structural Transformation, Inequality Dynamics, and Inclusive Growth
This book explores this developer’s dilemma or ‘Kuznetsian tension’ between structural transformation and income inequality. Developing countries are seeking economic development—that is, structural transformation—which is inclusive in the sense that it is broad-based and raises the income of all, especially the poor. Thus, inclusive economic growth requires steady, or even falling, income inequality if it is to maximize the growth of incomes at …
Early Childhood Dietary Intake and Subsequent Socioemotional and Cognitive School Readiness Among Australian Children
Dietary intake can affect the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development of young children. Few studies have explored the relationships between dietary intake and the cognitive and socioemotional dimensions of school readiness. This study aimed to investigate the longitudinal associations between children’s dietary intake in early childhood, and cognitive and socioemotional school readiness indicators at age 4–5 years using data from the…
Measuring global poverty before and during the pandemic: A political economy of overoptimism
The contribution of this paper is to question the ‘official’ estimates of global monetary poverty up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue there is a political economy of overoptimism in the measurement of global poverty. Specifically, we show that the methodological and presentational choices can lead to an over optimistic view of the levels of, and trends in, global poverty. We provide an up-to-date critique of the global poverty estima…
The End of Global Poverty: Is the UN Sustainable Development Goal 1 (Still) Achievable
This paper asks whether the UN Sustainable Development Goal to end poverty is achievable in the aftermath of the COVID‐19 pandemic. We discuss various estimates of the poverty impact of the pandemic. We then differentiate growth‐poverty‐inequality pathways based on empirical observations from developing countries over the last 25 years. We take the most equitable growth pathways (characterised by mean household income/consumption expenditure grow…
A direct test of Kuznets in a developing economy: A cross-district analysis of structural transformation and inequality in Indonesia
This paper empirically tests the Kuznets hypothesis that structural transformation–the movement of labour from low productivity to higher productivity sectors–is associated with rising inequality in a developing economy. We assemble a unique data set of inequality and sectoral employment shares of almost 300 districts of Indonesia and sector-specific measures of inequality for the period 1992–2017. Unlike studies that use value added shares to te…
The developer’s dilemma: A survey of structural transformation and inequality dynamics
This paper discusses the ‘developer’s dilemma’—a tension emerging from the fact that developing countries are simultaneously seeking structural transformation and broad-based growth to raise incomes of the poor. Simon Kuznets originally hypothesized that structural transformation may have a tendency—in the absence of policy intervention—to put upward pressure on income inequality. However, broad-based economic growth requires steady or even falli…
Estimates of the impact of Covid-19 on global poverty
In this paper we make estimates of the potential short-term economic impact of COVID-19 on global monetary poverty through contractions in per capita household income or consumption. Our estimates are based on three scenarios: low, medium, and high global contractions of 5, 10, and 20 per cent; we calculate the impact of each of these scenarios on the poverty headcount using the international poverty lines of US$1.90, US$3.20 and US$5.50 per day.…
A Proposal for a New Universal Development Commitment
Most developed countries have accepted, in principle at least, the 50‐year‐old commitment of contributing 0.7 per cent of gross national income to supporting the development of developing countries. But what if all countries made a universal development commitment, meaning a scaled contribution? We propose a new universal and scaled financial commitment to development, informed by but not necessarily identical to official development assistance. …
Double Dividends and Mixed Blessings: Structural Transformation, Income Inequality and Employment Dynamics
This paper provides an introduction to a special section on structural transformation, income inequality and employment dynamics. The set of papers in the special section in different ways revisit the seminal works of Lewis, Kuznets and Kaldor in a contemporary context
The End of Poverty: Inequality and Growth in Global Perspective
Who are the world’s poor? A new profile of global multidimensional poverty
Global Poverty and Inequality: Change and Continuity in Late Development
This contribution assesses the 'converging divergence' thesis that global inequality is falling and national inequality is rising. The article argues that falling global inequality is primarily due to China's development and that national inequality has risen in some developing countries and fallen in others. In light of the dominance of China's development in the global picture, questions arise as to what has changed and what has not changed out…
Development and Distribution
Since the Second World War, surprisingly few developing countries have experienced a truly sustained episode of economic and social convergence towards the structural characteristics of the advanced nations. The region of the world that has gone the furthest in that convergence is East Asia. Much has been written on comparative industrialization and development in North East Asia but relatively less on South East Asia. This book focuses on the la…
Conclusion: Structural Change in South East Asia
In this concluding chapter, we draw together the book’s discussion. This chapter provides a retrospective of the book and the main arguments, and responds to three core questions outlined in the introduction: How deep, and of what nature, was the structural transformation and inclusive growth in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand? How did Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand deal with the distributional tensions that rapid change often entails? And h…
Global poverty and inequality: Are the revised estimates open to an alternative interpretation
The level of, and trends in, global inequality and global poverty are indicative assessments of who has benefited from economic growth. The revision of price data has led to a reassessment of those estimates. Through an extensive overview of the implications, we argue that the data can be read in different ways. Official estimates show global extreme poverty and global inequality are considerably lower than previously thought. We argue that these…
The Developing World’s “New Middle Classes: Implications for Political Research
Rapid middle-income growth over the past decades has led to increasing public interest in the developing world’s “new middle classes”. However, these transformations have received less attention in the comparative democratization and welfare-state regime literature. In this review article, we aim to fill this gap by identifying emerging evidence and new directions for research about the social and political consequences of lower-middle income gro…
The world’s two new middles: Growth, precarity, structural change, and the limitations of the special case
This paper discusses the emergence of two new middles since the Cold War, namely middle-income countries and people living above absolute poverty but below a security-from poverty-line. The paper sets out what has happened. It is argued that although there has been substantial economic growth, only a relatively small group of the new middle-income countries have achieved structural transformation, and a large proportion of the ‘middle’ people sit…
Where Do The Poor Live
Who are the world’s poor? A new profile of global multidimensional poverty
Twenty Years of Expenditure Inequality in Indonesia, 1993–2013
In this article, we consider the recent increase in inequality in Indonesia. We make new, consistent estimates of expenditure inequality for 1993-2013, using several measures that draw on household expenditure data from the National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) for 1993-2013. In doing so, we note that the central statistics agency, Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS), used grouped data for its estimates of inequality until 2009 and that this underestim…
The Developing World’s “New Middle Classes: Implications for Political Research
Rapid middle-income growth over the past decades has led to increasing public interest in the developing world’s “new middle classes”. However, these transformations have received less attention in the comparative democratization and welfare-state regime literature. In this review article, we aim to fill this gap by identifying emerging evidence and new directions for research about the social and political consequences of lower-middle income gro…
Does Mixed Methods Research Matter to Understanding Childhood Well-Being
Growth, Poverty, and Inequality under Jokowi
The political authority of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) was bolstered in the third quarter of 2015 by a cabinet reshuffle, his coalition's gaining a parliamentary majority, and several foreign-policy developments. Indonesia's request to rejoin OPEC, for example, after having left in 2008, seemed more about international relations than oil prices, while official visits to the Middle East and the United States allowed Jokowi to project his presid…
Estimating the Scale and Geography of Global Poverty Now and in the Future: How Much Difference Do Method and Assumptions Make
Beyond Business as Usual: What Might 3-D Wellbeing Contribute to MDG Momentum
The Millennium Declaration provided considerable impetus to refocus the efforts of development agents around the world on the major ethical challenge of eradicating global poverty. The MDGs that followed have become an important mechanism for pursuing the agenda of the Millennium Declaration. We are now, however, at a point where reflection on the MDG framework is called for. In this article we explore what the contribution of a concept of (3-dim…
Is the ‘Developing World’ Changing? A Dynamic and Multidimensional Taxonomy of Developing Countries
What could Development Studies be
Over the past 10–15 years there has been an expansion of interest in the subject of Development Studies (DS). There are now significantly more taught courses focused on DS, and research funds are booming. However, over the same period, DS has faced sustained critiques about its essential nature. This has led us to ask: what is Development Studies? And what could or should it be
Capturing Multidimensionality: What does a Human Wellbeing Conceptual Framework Add to the Analysis of Vulnerability
Assessing Poverty Trends in Indonesia by International Poverty Lines
Indonesia has made well-documented and drastic progress in raising average incomes and reducing poverty. This article adds to the literature by providing a complementary perspective of poverty between 1984 and 2011. We discuss the evolution of poverty in Indonesia using international poverty lines—$1.25 per person per day (in 2005 purchasing power parity dollars) and $2.00 per day, and we add $10.00 per day. We generate estimates of poverty since…
The market for ‘evidence’ in policy processes: The case of child health policy in Andhra Pradesh, India and Viet Nam
Unity in Diversity? Reflections on Development Studies in the Mid-2020s
Development Studies (DS) demonstrates maturity as a field of inquiry marked by the half-century anniversaries of journals, institutes, and scholarly associations of DS. There is vitality in terms of the volume of research and the buoyant numbers of students engaging with the subject, though DS continues to fragment. The central argument of this paper is that contemporary DS has four broad ‘schools of thought’ which differ significantly in terms o…
Global Poverty and Inequality: Change and Continuity in Late Development
This contribution assesses the 'converging divergence' thesis that global inequality is falling and national inequality is rising. The article argues that falling global inequality is primarily due to China's development and that national inequality has risen in some developing countries and fallen in others. In light of the dominance of China's development in the global picture, questions arise as to what has changed and what has not changed out…
Global poverty and inequality: Are the revised estimates open to an alternative interpretation
The level of, and trends in, global inequality and global poverty are indicative assessments of who has benefited from economic growth. The revision of price data has led to a reassessment of those estimates. Through an extensive overview of the implications, we argue that the data can be read in different ways. Official estimates show global extreme poverty and global inequality are considerably lower than previously thought. We argue that these…
Introduction - The MDGs and Beyond: Pro-poor Policy in a Changing World
This issue of the IDS Bulletin is dedicated to discussing and reviewing the MDGs and the global effort that grew from the UN Millennium Declaration. This article provides an overview of this IDS Bulletin and introduces the key themes
Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries: Have we reached a policy ‘tipping point’
In the 1990s, around the world, government policies on fdi were unequivocally fdi -friendly. Numerous policy changes were enacted to make the investment climate more favourable to fdi. However, over the past few years a range of countries has enacted policy measures less favourable to fdi. Does this represent an overall shift in fdi policy thinking? And, if so, what are the current drivers of such a change? This paper discusses trends in contempo…
In search of the Post-Washington (dis)consensus: The ‘missing’ content of PRSPS
The policy-making context in the ‘South’ would seem to have changed in recent years, potentially opening space for alternative voices. The international financial institutions no longer overtly insist on policy content. The ‘locally owned’ Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (prsp) has become the main vehicle for policy. Many have argued prsps represent a ‘remorphing’ of neoliberalism or the Washington Consensus as practised by the international fin…
Measuring global poverty before and during the pandemic: A political economy of overoptimism
The contribution of this paper is to question the ‘official’ estimates of global monetary poverty up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue there is a political economy of overoptimism in the measurement of global poverty. Specifically, we show that the methodological and presentational choices can lead to an over optimistic view of the levels of, and trends in, global poverty. We provide an up-to-date critique of the global poverty estima…
Why Are Some People Poor
The Global Economic Crisis and Beyond: What Possible Future(s) for Development Studies
Will the Global Financial Crisis Change the Development Paradigm
The depth and breadth of the current crisis has led many to suggest it will fundamentally change development thinking and practice. We review four ways in which the crisis may affect the ‘development paradigm’: changes to global economic governance; new thinking on development policy; opportunities to institutionalise social protection; the implementation of a Green New Deal. The global financial crisis may change the development paradigm through…
Rethinking Intergenerational Transmission(s): Does a Wellbeing Lens Help? The Case of Nutrition
The intergenerational transmission (IGT) of poverty is a well-established conceptualisation of how poverty is reproduced over time. IGT has been a popular approach but as currently constructed it tends to be overly deterministic, and to overly emphasise material assets. In contrast, ‘wellbeing’ is emerging as a complement to the more traditional ways of conceptualising and measuring poverty and deprivation around material consumption. Wellbeing e…
Technology, rural dynamics and pro-poor development
In search of the Post-Washington (dis)consensus: The ‘missing’ content of PRSPS
The policy-making context in the ‘South’ would seem to have changed in recent years, potentially opening space for alternative voices. The international financial institutions no longer overtly insist on policy content. The ‘locally owned’ Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (prsp) has become the main vehicle for policy. Many have argued prsps represent a ‘remorphing’ of neoliberalism or the Washington Consensus as practised by the international fin…
The politics of poverty policy: Are pro-poor policy processes expert-led or citizen-led
This article is concerned with the differing modalities of pro-poor policy formation and implementation. Debates are increasingly pulled in these two distinct directions: on the one hand, towards the importance of expert-led (i.e. research evidence-based) policy, and on the other hand, the need for citizen-led (i.e. participatory) policy processes. This article argues that neither modality is necessarily pro-poor. We explore the conditions under …
The market for ‘evidence’ in policy processes: The case of child health policy in Andhra Pradesh, India and Viet Nam
Technology, rural dynamics and pro-poor development
Policy Process for Children and Aids in Cambodia: Drivers and Obstacles
below, in separate subsections for each policy area
Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries: Have we reached a policy ‘tipping point’
In the 1990s, around the world, government policies on fdi were unequivocally fdi -friendly. Numerous policy changes were enacted to make the investment climate more favourable to fdi. However, over the past few years a range of countries has enacted policy measures less favourable to fdi. Does this represent an overall shift in fdi policy thinking? And, if so, what are the current drivers of such a change? This paper discusses trends in contempo…
What could Development Studies be
Over the past 10–15 years there has been an expansion of interest in the subject of Development Studies (DS). There are now significantly more taught courses focused on DS, and research funds are booming. However, over the same period, DS has faced sustained critiques about its essential nature. This has led us to ask: what is Development Studies? And what could or should it be
After 2015: International Development Policy at a Crossroads
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have played a major role in focusing policy since their original incarnation in the mid to late 1990s but what happens when we no longer have the MDGs - what wi
Introduction: The Global Financial Crisis, Developing Countries and Policy Responses
How is the global financial crisis affecting developing countries and what should policy responses be? This is the subject of this IDS Bulletin. In this introduction, we summarise the key findings of a set of research projects on the financial crisis undertaken at IDS between February and April 2009 and propose policy responses
Will the Global Financial Crisis Change the Development Paradigm
The depth and breadth of the current crisis has led many to suggest it will fundamentally change development thinking and practice. We review four ways in which the crisis may affect the ‘development paradigm’: changes to global economic governance; new thinking on development policy; opportunities to institutionalise social protection; the implementation of a Green New Deal. The global financial crisis may change the development paradigm through…
Rethinking Intergenerational Transmission(s): Does a Wellbeing Lens Help? The Case of Nutrition
The intergenerational transmission (IGT) of poverty is a well-established conceptualisation of how poverty is reproduced over time. IGT has been a popular approach but as currently constructed it tends to be overly deterministic, and to overly emphasise material assets. In contrast, ‘wellbeing’ is emerging as a complement to the more traditional ways of conceptualising and measuring poverty and deprivation around material consumption. Wellbeing e…
What is the Likely Poverty Impact of the Global Financial Crisis
Estimates of the poverty impact of the current crisis are becoming numerous and varied. Global estimates of poverty impacts are based on assumptions regarding Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth deceleration and the relationship between GDP growth and poverty. We take a different approach. We ask what do we know from research on the poverty impacts of previous financial crises in developing countries? We review current global estimates on poverty…
Does Mixed Methods Research Matter to Understanding Childhood Well-Being
The Global Economic Crisis and Beyond: What Possible Future(s) for Development Studies
Beyond Business as Usual: What Might 3-D Wellbeing Contribute to MDG Momentum
The Millennium Declaration provided considerable impetus to refocus the efforts of development agents around the world on the major ethical challenge of eradicating global poverty. The MDGs that followed have become an important mechanism for pursuing the agenda of the Millennium Declaration. We are now, however, at a point where reflection on the MDG framework is called for. In this article we explore what the contribution of a concept of (3-dim…
Does Research Reduce Poverty? Assessing the Impacts of Policy-oriented Research in Agriculture
In the current context of the global financial crisis and its aftermath, development resources are likely to be getting scarcer. Resources for development research are too. The set of circumstances generating the resource scarcity is also putting pressure on development gains. More than ever before, every dollar spent on development will have to count towards sustainable poverty reduction, as will every dollar spent on development research. In li…
Introduction - The MDGs and Beyond: Pro-poor Policy in a Changing World
This issue of the IDS Bulletin is dedicated to discussing and reviewing the MDGs and the global effort that grew from the UN Millennium Declaration. This article provides an overview of this IDS Bulletin and introduces the key themes
Where Do The Poor Live
Voices: Southern NGO Perspectives on the Millennium Development Goals and Beyond
Debates are beginning to evolve on what might form the next generation of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The post-2015 debate stands to be a ‘lightning rod’ for fundamental questions of what development is about, and how to make it happen. In light of this, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) conducted over 100 interviews with Southern non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to c…
Revisiting the Meaning of Development: A Multidimensional Taxonomy of Developing Countries
Many have challenged the use of income per capita as the primary proxy for measuring development since Seers's seminal works. This article continues this tradition with a more recent twist. We use cluster analysis to build a multidimensional taxonomy of developing countries using a set of indicators covering four conceptual frames on 'development'. The value-added of the article is not to suggest that our classification is the end in itself, but …
The Millennium Development Goals and Human Rights: Past, Present and Future
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have generated tremendous discussion in global policy and academic circles. On the one hand, they have been hailed as the most important initiative ever in international development. On the other hand, they have been described as a great betrayal of human rights and universal values that has contributed to a depoliticization of development. With contributions from scholars from the fields of economics, law,…
Poverty, Politics and Aid: Is a reframing of global poverty approaching
This paper argues that a significant reframing of global poverty is likely to emerge in the next decade as world poverty becomes less about the transfer of aid and more about domestic distribution and thus domestic politics. This proposition is based on a discussion of the shift of much of global poverty towards middle-income countries. There are questions arising related to how countries are classified and to administrative capacities, as well a…
Capturing Multidimensionality: What does a Human Wellbeing Conceptual Framework Add to the Analysis of Vulnerability
Estimating the Scale and Geography of Global Poverty Now and in the Future: How Much Difference Do Method and Assumptions Make
Assessing Poverty Trends in Indonesia by International Poverty Lines
Indonesia has made well-documented and drastic progress in raising average incomes and reducing poverty. This article adds to the literature by providing a complementary perspective of poverty between 1984 and 2011. We discuss the evolution of poverty in Indonesia using international poverty lines—$1.25 per person per day (in 2005 purchasing power parity dollars) and $2.00 per day, and we add $10.00 per day. We generate estimates of poverty since…
Economics (44 works) · Economic growth (40 works) · Development economics (34 works) · Poverty (31 works) · Income, Poverty, and Inequality (30 works) · Political science (30 works) · Geography (22 works) · Sociology (19 works) · International Development and Aid (17 works) · Inequality (15 works)