Anne Booth graduated from Victoria University, Wellington, and then did graduate work at the Australian National University. She subsequenty taught at the University of Singapore for three years before returning to the ANU as a research fellow. In 1991, she accepted a chair at SOAS, University of London, and worked there until she retired in 2014. She was awarded a Lee Kong Chian fellowship in 2015/16, which allowed her to carry out research for this monograph at Stanford University and the National University of Singapore.

• Preface, Chapter One: Assessing Changes in Living Standards in Southeast Asia in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries: What Indicators Should We Look At? Chapter Two: The Colonial Period: Population and Output Growth in Agricultural and Non-agricultural Sectors Chapter Three: The Colonial Period: Measures of Welfare and Changing Living Standards Chapter Four: Confronting the Challenges of Independence Chapter Five: Estimating Poverty and Inequality: Country Estimates from the 1950s to the 1970s Chapter Six: The 1980s and the 1990s: The Fast and the Slow in Southeast Asia Chapter Seven: Growth, Poverty and Distribution in the Early 21st Century The Impact of Accelerated Growth after 2004: The Evidence from National Poverty Lines Creating Internationally Comparable Poverty Estimates Trends in Inequality: 2005-15 Flaws in the Household Surveys Should Monetary Estimates be Abandoned? Human Development Rankings Inequality in Non-monetary Indicators Chapter Eight: Government Policy Interventions Chapter Nine: What Have We Learned? Concluding Comments, Bibliography, Index