Is There New Capacity for Redistribution to End Poverty in MICs?

Amartya Sen's famous study of famines found that people died not because of a lack of food availability in a country but because some people lacked entitlements to that food. Is a similar situation now the case for middle-income countries, meaning that national resources are available but are not used to end poverty? This chapter argues that (i) MICs account for a large proportion of global poverty; (ii) most MICs have the financial capacity to end poverty at least at lower poverty lines. Our findings provide a rationale for a stronger consideration of some national redistribution for purely instrumental reasons: to reduce or end global poverty sooner than waiting for growth. Our findings also support the extension of Sen's theory of famines to global poverty meaning global poverty is increasingly a matter of national inequality.