GEP-2025年1月第4章-21世纪低收入国家的毕业率下降前景

CHAPTER 4FALLING GRADUATION PROSPECTSLow-Income Countries in the 21st Century EXECUTIVE SUMMARY GLOBAL ECONOMIC PROSPECTS | JANUARY 2025 2 The rate at which low-income countries (LICs) are transitioning to middle-income status has slowed. In 2000, 63 emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) were classified as low-income countries (LICs). They were home to more than 60 percent of the 1.8 billion people worldwide then living in extreme poverty. Since then, 39 of those countries have graduated to middle-income status. Yet amid deteriorating global and domestic conditions, the rate at which LICs are climbing the income ladder has slowed markedly (figure ES.A). Twenty-four countries that were LICs at the turn of the century remain so, with annual per capita incomes below $1,145 in 2023. South Sudan and the Syrian Arab Republic have joined their ranks amid debilitating conflicts, raising the total to 26 LICs today. Across a wide spectrum of development indicators, today’s LICs are worse off than LICs in 2000 that subsequently attained middle-income status. In 2024, these 26 countries—concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa—comprised more than 40 percent of people living in extreme poverty globally. Making progress on eliminating extreme poverty therefore depends crucially on accelerating pro-gress in LICs. On recent trends, all but six of today’s LICs will remain low-income through 2050. The economic challenges confronting LICs have intensified in the last 15 years amid deadlier conflict and violence, climate shocks, debt crises, and anemic growth. In today’s LICs as a whole, annual per capita growth has averaged less than 0.1 percent since 2010—signifying 15 lost years (figure ES.B). Traditional modes of structural transformation have also stalled, with labor productivity estimated to have declined outright. As a consequence of these trends, extreme poverty has ceased falling in LICs (figure ES.C). Moreo-ver, at average 2010-2019 growth rates, only six LICs would be expected to graduate to middle-income by 2050 (figure ES.D). This would represent less than one-quarter of eligible coun-tries, down sharply from the nearly two-thirds that advanced in the first quarter of this century. Generating growth accelerations can fast-track LIC graduation and yield large improvements in economic and development outcomes. With political stability and supportive policies, LICs can achieve transformative growth accelera-tions—sustained periods of substantially higher per capita growth, during which output becomes more investment- and trade-intensive. Since 1990, 26 growth accelerations have been achieved from low-income levels, during which real per capita GDP typically increased by close to 7 percent annually. These accelerations lasted nearly 16 years on average. Over the course of the accelera-tion, investment-to-GDP ratios tended to rise by about 8 percentage points, with the agricultural share of employment declining rapidly and trade openness increasing.