Call for Papers
TOPIC : GLOBAL POVERTY MEASUREMENT AND CRISES
- Long abstract Submission (2 pages): December 31, 2026
- Full Paper Deadline: June 30, 2027
Reviews of Economic Literature (REL) is a peer reviewed, academic-led, diamond open access journal with no submission fees or article processing charges thanks to initial grants and library community support. It is published by Stanford University Press. This special topics section is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO 2025/OS/02056641).
For questions about the special topics scope, suitability of contributions, or submission process, please contact the section editors.
Section Editors
Michail Moatsos, Maastricht University, michail.moatsos@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Andy Sumner, King’s College London, andrew.sumner@kcl.ac.uk
Introduction to the Special Topics Section
Global poverty measurement faces a paradox: just when evidence matters most, it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce. Since 2020, the sharp decline in household survey coverage across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has left some of the world’s poorest regions among the least well measured. Uncertainty surrounding the future of the formerly USAID-funded Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) programme further widens this evidence gap. Analysts increasingly rely on alternatives, including machine-learning and nowcasting methods, yet the limitations of these approaches remain contested.
The conceptual foundations of poverty measurement are also under strain. Poverty lines are necessarily conventional thresholds, and crossing them may reveal little about changes in wellbeing. Monetary and multidimensional measures remain weakly connected, while estimates can be highly sensitive to methodological choices: the same Indian survey data, for example, can generate absolute poverty rates ranging from under 5 per cent to around 25 per cent. At the same time, the coming decade is likely to bring compounding shocks rather than stability, making static, lagged headcounts increasingly inadequate. Greater attention is therefore needed on vulnerability, movements into and out of poverty, and the question of who is securely non-poor.
The special topics section will take stock of the crisis in global poverty measurement and consider what comes next. It will bring together research from monetary, multidimensional and participatory traditions to explore the future of the field.
Scope and Themes
We welcome quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods papers addressing the following themes, among others:
- The measurement crisis: Reviews and meta-analyses of the post-2020 decline in survey data across SSA and MENA; uncertainty surrounding the future of the formerly USAID-funded DHS programme; the arbitrariness of poverty lines; weak links between monetary and multidimensional measures; and the sensitivity of estimates to methodological choices.
- Poverty in an age of shocks: Syntheses of how compounding shocks undermine static, lagged headcounts; core metrics of vulnerability, movements into and out of poverty, and securely non-poor; and evidence from high-frequency and telephone-survey approaches developed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Ways forward: Critical assessments of machine-learning and nowcasting methods where data are scarce or absent; approaches to connecting monetary and multidimensional poverty measures; and participatory and democratic alternatives for defining and contesting poverty.
Thanks to the Dutch Research Council (NWO 2025/OS/02056641), REL has the capacity to host a workshop in Maastricht to support the development of special topics papers. The decision on this will be taken after the abstract submission deadline.
Submission Information
Please submit abstracts via Reviews of Economic Literature’s online submission portal. They should be concise and convey the contributions of the manuscript. We will also consider submissions of full papers rather than abstracts.
Invited papers should be prepared according to the journal’s author guidelines. All manuscript submissions will undergo editorial assessment and peer review in line with the journal’s policies, ensuring academic rigor and quality.
