Low Income Countries Shrink to 35 from 63

The World Bank did its annual assessment of poor countries last week (link here). Low-income countries are those with average gross national incomes (GNIs) of less than $1,005 per person per year. And there are only 35 of them remaining out of the countries and economies that the World Bank tracks. That's down from 63 in 2000.

Each year on July 1 the World Bank revises its classification of the world’s economies based on estimates of gross national income (GNI) per capita for the previous year. Income classifications on the country pages of the Open Data site and regional and income group aggregates in the World Development Indicators, Global Development Finance, and other databases will be revised accordingly at the time of their next scheduled release.

The updated GNI per capita estimates are also used as input to the World Bank’s operational classification of economies, which determines their lending eligibility. The new listing of all economies included in the World Bank’s databases and their regional and income classifications can be found here.

Further analysis exploring how the countries have moved from poverty by Charles Kenny and Andy Sumner in The Guardian.