Martin Ravallion (19 March 1952 – 24 December 2022) was an Australian economist. He was the inaugural Edmond D. Villani Professor of Economics at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise eleven undergraduate and graduate ...

, and had previously been director of the research department at the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

. He held a PhD in economics from the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 milli ...

Life and career

Ravallion researched extensively on

poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse

in developing countries and on policies for fighting poverty. In 1990 he proposed what has come to be known as the "$1 a day"

poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

, and since then he and his colleagues at the bank monitored progress against global poverty by this and other measures. A paper he wrote in 2012 became the basis of the

, and subsequently

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

, development goal of eliminating

extreme poverty Extreme poverty, deep poverty, abject poverty, absolute poverty, destitution, or penury, is the most severe type of poverty, defined by the United Nations (UN) as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, includi ...

in the world by 2030. He advised numerous governments and international agencies, and wrote five books and 250 papers in scholarly journals, as well as editing several volumes. His book ''The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement, and Policy'' was published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

in January 2016. Based on publications and citations, Ravallion is regularly ranked in the top 10 development economists in the world and was ranked number 1 globally in the field of Development Economics by RePEc/IDEAS. He is ranked in the top 100 economists in all fields. He was a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a senior fellow of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development, a non-resident fellow of the Center for Global Development, and ex-president of the society for the Study of Economic Inequality. In 2011 he received the John Kenneth Galbraith Award from the American Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. He won the 2015

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards () are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation. The categories that make up the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ...

in Development Cooperation for his groundbreaking work on defining the extreme poverty threshold with internationally applicable standards that facilitate the establishment of specific development cooperation goals. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in economics from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Ravallion died on 24 December 2022, at the age of 70.

Selected bibliography

Books

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Chapters in books

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References

External links

Georgetown University profileEconomics & Poverty - Martin Ravallion's Website on the Economics of Poverty
1952 births 2022 deaths Australian economists Center for Global Development Development economists Georgetown University faculty World Bank Chief Economists World Bank people {{economist-stub