'Extreme poverty' to fall below 10% of world population for first time

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/05/world-bank-extreme-poverty-to-fall-below-10-of-world-population-for-first-time

by hliyan • 11 years ago

283 239 11 years ago

theguardian.com

briantakita3• 11 years ago

Their definition of poverty is earning below a certain dollar amount ($1.90/day).

Their measure of poverty has nothing to do with the access to quality water, quality food, land, quality of life, freedom, personal autonomy, health, safety, etc.

Many indigenous people lived on $0.00/day yet had a higher quality of life; before outside influences (i.e. civilization, imperial, western) disrupted their ecosystems & way of life.

afsina7• 11 years ago

Still, this is a relative improvement. There are many other indications (such as infant death ratio) supporting this.

briantakita3• 11 years ago

As some of the quantitative metrics improve, many of the metrics (particularly of qualitative nature) degrade. Think ecosystems, our usage of resources, quality of life for the average person, etc.

There are many other indications (such as infant death ratio) supporting this.

This is one of the many metrics that matter; much more than the percentage of people making > $1.90/day.

cuchoi3• 11 years ago

Income is a proxy. There are multidimensional definitions of poverty, but they are too hard to measure and compare across countries.

msandford• 11 years ago

Right, but I think that's partially the point. When you try and boil things down to a simple number, you lose a ton of information. Perhaps it's not wise to do this extreme metric-izing as it will probably just lead to the metrics being gamed rather than actual improvements.

mason240• 11 years ago

They were also living as hunter gathers in very sparsely populated areas. The earth can't support 8 billion people with berry gathering and deer hunting.

prodmerc• 11 years ago

"Welcome to civilization. This land's not yours anymore. Want to eat? Work for us."

tomjen3• 11 years ago

And to live that way we only have to let 99% of the population starve.

Also they probably had lots more women die giving birth.

alienjr• 11 years ago

Thank you globalization.

afsina7• 11 years ago

Perhaps better is to say, "Thank you for opening the trade gates".

vlan0• 11 years ago

Is this the primary force behind a change such as this?

After watching the documentary called 'Life and Debt', I found the idea of "free trade" in poorer countries to be very different than i would have first thought. It seems free trade in the case of Jamaica resulted in a large import of goods, to the point where local Jamaica could not compete with the huge multinational corps from other countries.

fiatjaf6• 11 years ago

Perhaps it is better to say: "Thank you, inflation."

Tuna-Fish• 11 years ago

The measure they use is based on purchasing power and corrected for inflation.

The world's poorest are really getting less poor.

legulere• 11 years ago

I don't think globalisation plays that big a role in preventing poverty. Big causes are wars and mismanagement by unjust governments.

mattmcknight• 11 years ago

Oh, it plays a huge role.

ctdonath7• 11 years ago

Nay, a huge role. People who were far outside major economic activity can now participate in global markets, improving their ability to sell goods & services (and obtain tools & connections).

A few days ago I ordered & received a cheap scarf via mail. US$0.95 - delivered! from China! obviously whoever was involved didn't make much off the transaction, yet they WERE able to make & sell & deliver something to an idiot on the other side of the planet. Where there was no market before, Amazon & USPS & other businesses have pursued "globalization" to the point that a manufacturer & buyer a world apart could engage in profitable transactions.

The way out of poverty is capitalism, sellers & buyers making mutually profitable agreements, and globalization eliminating barriers of distance & borders.

ptaipale7• 11 years ago

Globalisation is absolutely vital in reducing poverty -- particularly in countries that used to be very poor because they were excluded from the world market, e.g. China and India, where a very large proportion of the world's poor used to live. Not any more.

lumberjack• 11 years ago

Extreme poverty has long been defined as living on or below $1.25 a day, but the World Bank’s adjustment now sets the poverty line at $1.90 a day.

That is intentionally misleading.

How about "extreme poverty" = "still suffering malnutrition" + "still lacking even basic education" + "still lacking any access to healthcare"

The $1.90 tells nothing and it is also dependant on purchasing power. If somebody was making $200/month in the US that would also be extreme poverty.

cuchoi3• 11 years ago

The poverty and extreme poverty line are adjusted in each country according to purchasing power.

You are right that somebody making $200/month in the US would be classified as extreme poor (and someone in India would not be considered extreme poor if he earns $200/month). I don't see the problem with this.

hansjorg• 11 years ago

still lacking even basic education

The world literacy rate and trend is supposedly pretty good. However, there are large differences in how literacy is measured and huge uncertainties in the numbers.

In some countries you're considered to be literate if you can sign your name, in others they just report 99-100% without doing any measurements.

UNESCO have plans for a better test to be applied globally, but I'm not sure any test that would lower the numbers would ever be welcomed.

ptaipale7• 11 years ago

You really should watch this Hans Rosling's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg

It's not misleading. Malnutrition is going down, lack of education is going down, lack of access to healthcare is going down. The more you read the Guardian, the more you have misconceptions about how bad the world is developing.

amelius2• 11 years ago

A lot of numbers in this article, but how much would it cost us to solve poverty? And for different values of the poverty line?

fiatjaf6• 11 years ago

Cost us? Are you crazy? You mean you want to take a lot of money and throw at something and you imagine it will solve anything?

Matumio3• 11 years ago

Obviously the extreme lack of money, also known as "poverty", can be solved with money. Assuming that you don't throw the money at "something" but at "somebody", this "somebody" will by definition not be poor any more.

xj9• 11 years ago

Responsibly throwing money at problems is exactly how you solve them. There are a lot of factors that we know of that contribute to continued poverty and cause suffering for those subject to it. This would include, among other things:

1. Universal education (free for anyone interested) 2. Universal healthcare (also free) 3. Improved housing 4. Reliable, clean utilities

Sure, this stuff might be expensive, but the long term benefit of having more healthy, educated people around significantly outweighs the cost.

Shivetya2• 11 years ago

you solve property by having governments that respect citizen's property rights, having good rule of law, and a sound money policy usually with freedom of exchange. government managed economies tend to only benefit those in power or already well off.

in other words, you create an environment where entrepreneurs can successfully operate as people tend to strive more when they see their efforts pay off and those pay offs are not subject to the whims of others

amelius2• 11 years ago

Obviously, yes, this is the preferred long-term solution. This doesn't buy anything for the people suffering at this very instant. Also, if you are struggling to survive, how are you going to even think about getting education?

clavalle4• 11 years ago

That's one half of it.

The other half is making sure that people can bargain from a position of power rather than getting stuck in a spiral of exploitative transactions.

crdb• 11 years ago

To help you answer that literally: according to Simon Mann who did it successfully twice and failed once [1], a successful mercenary invasion and peace-keeping effort in a country like Sierra Leone cost around 1 million GBP in the mid-1990s.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Cry-Havoc-Simon-Mann/dp/1743142307

corysama• 11 years ago

With some creativity, reducing poverty can be a profitable enterprise.

http://longnow.org/seminars/02008/may/21/technology-empowers...

fiatjaf6• 11 years ago

That's crazy. Inflation is enourmous (and inflation is not the same as GDP variations). Any criteria that uses dollars cannot have any value in a historical series.

If you get a chart of how many people live with less than $2 per month you'll probably see a continuous steady decline. Why? Inflation.

ekiru2• 11 years ago

The World Bank periodically adjusts the threshold upwards for this reason. In 1990, they used $1/day. In 2008, they adjusted it to $1.25/day. Now they are adjusting it to $1.90/day.

fiatjaf6• 11 years ago

And you imagine that in 25 year the total inflation was only of 90%?

arca_vorago3• 11 years ago

While the middle class is being gutted, pushing more people into "just barely poverty".

nugget2• 11 years ago

That's the thing though: in the US, inequality between rich and poor is widening, but globally, it is narrowing. There are more global middle class now than ever before. It's hard to have this both ways until we approach closer to a post scarcity economy.

clavalle4• 11 years ago

I don't think post scarcity is a precondition of post poverty.

The more economically advanced nations need to reach income and worker/environmental protection parity with less economically advanced nations.

I'd prefer that be done by raising the level of the less advanced nations rather than lowering the level of the more advanced nations but that's a different discussion.

ctdonath7• 11 years ago

The problem with "wealth inequality" complaints is "poor" has an absolute brick-wall bottom value ($0/yr), but there is no upper limit (short of $WorldGDP/yr). This isn't a zero-sum game, so the fact that one person is financially far above others doesn't necessarily mean things must be worse for others.

ptaipale7• 11 years ago

The middle class in America is still extremely rich by global standards. The reduction of global poverty is exactly this: other nations have come to compete on the world market, and that means that whole industries have moved elsewhere. It doesn't happen without consequences.

The main problem of American middle class, and even more so the problem of American poor, is actually obesity. Think about that.

cjbenedikt3• 11 years ago

"More and more analysts, though, are pointing out that this claim is little more than an accounting trick: UN officials have massaged the numbers to make it seem as though poverty has been reduced, when in fact it has increased." http://ssir.org/articles/entry/using_design_thinking_to_erad...

vidarh9• 11 years ago

This one (linked from yours) is even more directly addressing the trickery involved:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/exposing-gr...

Isamu• 11 years ago

the Bank shifted the IPL from the original $1.02 (at 1985 PPP) to $1.08 (at 1993 PPP), which, given inflation, was lower in real terms.

I don't understand this, and they don't explain. What is PPP, if not "real terms"? Plus I hate it when somebody makes a claim like this without actually showing the numbers, or creating a graph - it makes the claim less plausible than what they are complaining about.

Otherwise the article has valid points, mostly about watering down goals, and the lack of real progress in poverty reduction.

Note also that the OP is about the poverty rate, not about poverty being in decline, which is in fact increasing all too quickly.

yk2• 11 years ago

Unfortunately I fail to replicate the assertions of the article, using the World Bank's povcal tool. [0] ( Linked in the article.) As far as my clicking around goes, it seems that a strong reduction in poverty is independent of the precise poverty line used. In particular, if I use a poverty line of $2.5/day (2005 PPP), the data shows a reduction from 75% of global population to 46%, contrary to the claim of the article.

So just a bit playing with the data seems to imply that the claim of a strong reduction in global extreme poverty seems to be warranted. (This is certainly not a sciency study...)

[0] http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm?1#

crazydoggers• 11 years ago

Hmm... seems like if you move a large number of people out of "extreme poverty" which was originally defined by the UN, and set at $1.90 a day by the World Bank, they're still going to end up under the "poverty line" of $5.00 a day as defined by your article.

So I'm not sure how this constitutes a "trick". You'd have to move those people directly out of extreme poverty over the $5.00 a day in your article in order to drop the number of people in poverty.

It's still frankly an improvement to move such a large number of people up the poverty scale. I'm sure i'd rather be living on $4 a day rather than $2.

mbostleman5• 11 years ago

When it comes to policy that drives the funding of social programs and wealth redistribution, everything is an accounting trick.

One example is that the US Census Bureau's reporting of poverty statistics based on income has changed to NOT include the income of many benefits including food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit. If you include these benefits prior to counting the poor, the poverty rate falls to nearly zero.

This is why the director of the Census Bureau's report now answers to the White House instead of the Director of Commerce. Bending the numbers is essential to maintaining and expanding institutions.

The switch was made when Obama nominated Rebuplican senator Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary. Given that Gregg had previously voted to abolish the Commerce department, it is likely that his influence would have brought the numbers in line with the facts. But, had Gregg accepted the nomination, it would have opened up a senate seat that would have been filled by the Democratric governor of his state. So to have his cake and eat it too, Obama took control of the number reporting. Gregg did not accept the nomination.

Talk about accounting tricks.

Another example is the disparity between counting income vs. consumption. Again in the US, when the money spent by poorer classes that are studied is counted it is far greater than what is calculated as their income (which is what policy is based on) This indicates that in-kind gifts and other non-reported income is substantial, but not counted.

vidarh9• 11 years ago

Source? Because the Census Bureau also releases the Supplemental Poverty Measure [1], which amongst other breakdowns includes numbers that adjusts for taxes (if you're going to count for tax credits, you also need to account for taxes paid if the numbers are to make sense), housing benefits, and various in-kind benefits. It also includes various other costs. Table 4a on page 9 gives a breakdown on how different aspects of the Supplemental Poverty Measure affects the total number.

The lowest version you can get from that table is 11.8% - if you remove medical out of pocket expenses from the income subtractions before calculating the rate (in other words: if you assume people are perfectly healthy, directly contradicted by evidence, you get a more favourable number of how many people can afford to put food on the table).

I'm curious what elements you'd add/remove to the SPM to get to "nearly zero".

[1] http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...

sbov• 11 years ago

I can see reasons behind doing this either way.

A good example is in medications. Lots of people go off medication because they feel better. But they feel better because of the medication. So they no longer feel better after they go off it.

Similarly, if all poverty reports in the US included benefits, many conservatives would say: see, we have no more poverty. We can get rid of these programs. But these programs were why we had no-one under the poverty line. We now have poverty again.

tn132• 11 years ago

P.S. : This sort of argument would not go well on HN.

But you are right. Poverty is an accounting trick for everyone depending on how it suites those who are calculating it. In reality it is a hard thing to measure. But even the back of the envelope calculations would show that Poverty is substantially lower in India, China and many other countries which are known to be very poor.

gohrt• 11 years ago

You are saying that welfare systems successfully alleviate poverty, to insinuate that welfare systems not needed to alleviate poverty?

tn132• 11 years ago

Does not make sense. As someone who grew up in poverty in India which is also home to 17% of world population the poverty has reduced substantially over last 20 years post economic reforms.

There is no possible way I could think of how poverty could have increased. If we just look at China an India which is home to 33% of world population extreme poverty is down by 50% in whatever way you measure it.

ef43• 11 years ago

That article is highlighting deeply misleading facts. For example: "between 1990 and 2010 there was an increase of 371 million people living on less than $5 a day". But during the same time period, the world added 1.6 billion people, and even using your source's own data, that implies that the fraction of people living on less than $5 a day dropped from 75% to 60%.

In short, the claim that poverty is getting worse is utter bullshit. It requires either climate-change-denialist levels of willful ignorance, or a xenophobic definition of "poverty" that only counts people living in your own much-richer-than-global-average country.

mbostleman5• 11 years ago

"...or a xenophobic definition of "poverty" that only counts people living in your own much-richer-than-global-average country."

In which case you are no longer measuring poverty. You are measuring inequality.

webXL• 11 years ago

Good catch, but what does climate-change denial have to do with this? No, really, your "science is settled" attitude detracts from your case.

jsprogrammer• 11 years ago

You are looking at it in relative terms (total_in_poverty / total).

However, according to your own analysis of the poster's source, the absolute number of people in poverty has increased a lot.

In short, the claim that poverty is getting worse is utter bullshit.

371 million more people in poverty is not "getting worse"?

squids• 11 years ago

Did you factor in inflation into your calculation? By 2010 that 1990 $5 is worth $8.80. So you'd have to look at how many people were living on below that number to get your equivalent.

If i remember correctly, a 1981 $1 is now worth $2.50 if you factor in inflation so the fact they've chose to lower the bar at $1.90 reeks of politics.

knieveltech• 11 years ago

You could set an arbitrary dollar amount and simply wait for inflation to bring that number into range. How much of this is real improvement?

tim3332• 11 years ago

It's inflation adjusted kind of.

cjbenedikt3• 11 years ago

The Hypocrisy of ‘Helping’ the Poor http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-hypocri...

tim3332• 11 years ago

That's kind of on a different thing - rich americans giving a bit to charity after outsourcing US jobs.

yummyfajitas4• 11 years ago

That article paints rich Americans as pretty awesome people. First they lift millions of Chinese out of poverty and reduce inequality by shipping jobs in China. Then they donate some of the profits to less valuable causes like reducing relative poverty in the US.

The author of that article is kind of clueless, though - US-style "poverty" is not remotely like Zimbabwe poverty.

werber• 11 years ago

Have any groups outside of the World Bank confirmed this statistic?

myth_buster3• 11 years ago

I'm always wary of the numbers that are put out. There has been long history of fudging numbers to fit a narrative. The unemployment numbers in the US comes to mind as such an example.

So, the question is how realistic is the extreme poverty line. And this doesn't help it much:

  The World Bank first introduced a global poverty line in 1990, 
  setting it at $1 a day. 
  It was adjusted last in 2008, when the group raised it to $1.25 a day.

$1 seems like such a convenient number to pick!

An interesting graph will be to plot the extreme poverty threshold against inflation _in_emerging_countries_.

With the falling emerging market currencies and extreme inflation (hyper-inflation perhaps), I don't think that $1.90 a day cuts it.

abhishivsaxena• 11 years ago

WB fixed it in terms of constant International $, with base year 2005 - if I can remember correctly. So it's already inflation adjusted because it's at constant prices and not nominal prices.

Having said that, in most developing countries, being on the poverty line would mean that you have just enough for clothing and feeding yourself.

Nevertheless, it's exciting to see millions graduating out of it in just a decade. Specially for me, because I'm Indian.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY

    Population below $1.25 a day is the percentage 
    of the population living on less than $1.25 a 
    day at 2005 international prices

Also you might find this interesting - http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH...

   Moreover, the choice between $1.00 a day and $1.25 
   a day (or even higher lines) makes no difference to 
   the Bank’s claim that measures of absolute poverty 
   have fallen in the developing world over 1981-2005.

cjbprime• 11 years ago

It's the purchasing power of $1.25/day, rather than the absolute value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

dragontamer• 11 years ago

The unemployment numbers in the US comes to mind as such an example.

The unemployment numbers in the US are reported as such (ie: only reporting the number of people looking for jobs vs people employed) because they've been consistently reported like that since the late 1800s.

The "real" unemployment numbers are still taken from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/

Every statistic you want is there.

myth_buster3• 11 years ago

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

roymurdock• 11 years ago

Your point about the semi-arbitrary nature of the poverty line is good, but the figure is already inflation-adjusted. There is a general confusion on HN when it comes to real vs. nominal statistics. [1]

I find it's generally safe to assume that most of the well-respected development organizations are made up of smart people that know what they are doing and will not overlook something so fundamental as inflation, even if they do use statistics to advance their agendas from time to time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10335838

myth_buster3• 11 years ago

I'm not questioning their intelligence just their approach.

  well-respected development organizations are made up of smart people 
  that know what they are doing

Well, that was the thought about the financial industry, FCC, S&P etc before 2007.

theworstshill• 11 years ago

Thats a good measure, but I am pessimistic about poverty ever being rooted out completely (absent of a technological invention that creates abundant energy for very cheap, e.g. fusion, antimatter later on).

The reality is, poverty can be cultural. In the west a saying like "they can pay me little but I'll work even less" would be considered absurd. In certain countries - its a folk tradition.

Another problem is a self-inflicted brain drain. Smart people with potential don't want to live in festering shitholes where property rights are not respected, rule of law unexistant and hence economic opportunity absent.

mrbig4545• 11 years ago

that's terrible. 10% is far too high

bluthru• 11 years ago

Thank you automation.

ctdonath7• 11 years ago

For all the discussion (i.e.: heated biased arguing) about poverty, seems nobody has addressed an objective definition of what constitutes "poor". Why is the world poverty line at $1.25/day, but the US poverty line is 20x that? We need a quantitative analysis, starting with basic caloric/nutritional/BTU/water/power/data/etc needs (independent of arbitrary numbers imputed by fiat/floating currencies) for cost of bare sustenance, then work from there recognizing that varying geography, demographics, et al adjusts that cost, then admitting that different cultures further adjust those basic costs.

Without such objective analysis of basic sustenance, fudging numbers is trivial.

AlisdairO2• 11 years ago

Note that this is discussing 'extreme poverty', which is distinct from 'poverty'.

ultramancool• 11 years ago

Very good point, still, what does this include. I would think of extreme poverty as those who have extremely limited access to food, water and shelter. Fortunately that is legitimately becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the world I believe so this is a useful stat to track. Still, I have no idea if that's what's being represented here.

ctdonath7• 11 years ago

Indeed, my next question would involve objectively differentiating the two. I'm starting with the presumption that being above the bottom line at least constitutes a sustainable[1] existence, if not a comfortable one.

[1] "sustainable" as in one can live indefinitely unto a normal lifespan, assorted diseases & incidents aside; don't confuse with "green" energy & resources.

devinhelton3• 11 years ago

Yes, exactly. The numbers I would like to see measured would be:

- percent of people who can afford 2,500 calories of food and 60 grams of animal protein a day (where afford has some standard definition, such as can pay for the consumption using less than half of their income).

- percent of people who have access to clean water

- percent of people with indoor plumbing

- percent of people with access to electricity in the home.

- percent of people who can access and afford 500MB of internet data a month

It is impossible to know what "$2 a day" actually means. The number gets adjusted for purchasing power, but there is an infinite amount of room in that calculation for governments to fudge the data. Many people in the third world can afford a cell phone, but not afford enough protein in their diet, does that mean they are richer or poorer than someone one hundred years ago without a cell phone but who can afford meat? There is no objective way to answer that question. Since I do not know all the subjective decisions made in doing the purchasing power adjustment, the ultimate number tells me nothing.

GordonS3• 11 years ago

Why specifically animal protein and not just protein?

(I'm not a vegetarian or anything like that, it's a serious question)

GordonS3• 11 years ago

percent of people who can access and afford 500MB of internet data a month

I don't think I'd include Internet access in any definition of 'extreme poverty'.

swampthinker• 11 years ago

Honestly, I would take out the internet requirement. All the others can significantly improve quality of life in a home, but I can't truely say the same about internet access.

I'd love to hear the counterpoints, but I just can't imagine a farmer needing internet access to live a comfortable lifestyle, as opposed to clean water and electricity, which is necessary.

xacaxulu• 11 years ago

Mostly agree, but I would argue that requiring animal protein could be optional, especially with the follow-on climactic effects that raising so much animal meat causes. There are a number of cultures and sub-groups that are perfectly healthy without animal protein.

sanxiyn• 11 years ago

percent of people who have access to clean water

This number is actually measured, because it is target 7.C of MDG(Millennium Development Goals). Lots of data at http://mdgs.un.org/.

Summary is that we are doing very well on this number. In 1990 it was 76%, now it is 91%. In the absolute number, 2.6 billion people gained access to clean water in the period.

lhorie• 11 years ago

In south american countries, there's a concept called a "basic basket" ( https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canasta_b%C3%A1sica_de_aliment... ) ( https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesta_b%C3%A1sica ), which, while not standardized, can at least give you a ballpark cost of the basic food needs of an average household for a month.

One could conceivably figure out a reasonably not-out-of-thin-air number for each country by cross referencing the items in an arbitrary basic basket package and supermarket food prices in each country.

dredmorbius2• 11 years ago

"Market basket" is in fact how inflation is typically measured universally.

maxerickson3• 11 years ago

That's more or less what the World Bank is doing. The dollars per day are PPP adjusted, which attempts to account for all of those things you are talking about.

http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/international-pov...

I guess there is lots of room to quibble over how objective it is, but it is at least starting from the idea of doing an objective quantative analysis of the issue.

cuchoi3• 11 years ago

There has been lots of discussion on this topic. Many countries have a multidimensional measure of poverty, and there is also an international measure for it (http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/multidimensional-poverty-inde...).

The biggest problem is measuring it, so one standard income-based extreme poverty line makes sense in order to compare across countries.

Also, like I said in another comment, this measure of poverty is power purchase parity adjusted, so currency changes should not affect.

Wintamute• 11 years ago

Where are your references that this, or some similar methodology, isn't how the World Bank arrived at its figures? Don't you think they would have thought pretty seriously about what an objective measure for "extremely poor" is? Perhaps $1.90/day is a statistically valid proxy when thinking globally based on their methodology, perhaps it isn't ~ I don't know and I'm none the wiser from your comment. And where's your evidence that the numbers were "fudged"?

ctdonath7• 11 years ago

You're asking me to prove a negative in response to me asking for establishment of positive standards. Sure, the WB probably has some well thought out criteria - and I don't know where to find them, and have reason to believe most everyone else pontificating on the subject aren't sharing those criteria. I've not seen evidence ANYONE has worked out basic human needs to the point that anyone being given such satisfying resources can, and is, declared "not poor".

Of course you're none the wiser from my comment. It was a question (admittedly not bluntly phrased as such): what objectively constitutes "poor"?

Many in this thread decry the fudging of numbers in the discussion; I'd like something objective which can't really be fudged.

ETA: following another posters' suggested link, seems the WB admittedly arrived at that $1.90/day number by averaging the declared poverty lines of low-GDP/capita countries. That's not the quantitative objective analysis I'm looking for.

mc32• 11 years ago

You make some great points that measuring could be improved. Never the less so long as their method remains consistent, it shows the world getting richer or poorer relatively speaking.

For all the antiglobalization sentiment, I can't imagine this happening without globalization. If the workers of the developed world had put an economic moat around themselves and preserved their trend in rising purchasing power and had wages increase undeterred by labor competition from both shipping jobs overseas and allowing mass immigration of unskilled labor, we'd not have seen these improvements and those places, given the pop growth they experience over the last sixty years, would have been severely more impoverished.

keithwhor• 11 years ago

Sure, the poverty line is somewhat arbitrary. Poverty and general well-being are multi-dimensional concepts that are hard to reduce to a single number.

I think you're being a bit pedantic, though. The absolute number of those living in poverty can change with the stroke of a pen according to an arbitrary definition, sure. My interpretation is that the point of the article, and the thing that should be celebrated, is that life is on average getting better for the world community (even if only according to one metric).

I'm sure the data scientist in all of us wants to see "well-being" broken down by vertical. For one, I'm sure the data you're looking for exists, is likely accessible, and it would be intellectually satisfying to our curiosity (who wants to do the legwork? :)). Two, I'd be skeptical of the assumption that they'd show anything but a trend in the same direction (though maybe not all at the same rate).

ctdonath7• 11 years ago

Aside: I wish HN had sparklines alongside the "points" for one's posts. The up/down-voting on this thread has been pretty impressive.

leroy_masochist• 11 years ago

I think a per-capita statistic is a bit flawed in this case, although I understand why they use it -- the math is very simple.

The problem with per-capita measurement of income for very poor people is that what you really care about is per-family income because of the economies of scale involved in so many of the goods they consume -- cooking fuel, etc.

In places where poverty like this exists, a family of 8 living on $8/day ($1 per capita) is often better-off than a family of 4 living on $5/day ($1.25 per capita).

Regardless of whatever methodological flaws exist in various metrics, this is a positive trend that is (hopefully) only going to get better as technology increases the efficiency of various systems of distributing goods and services.

littletimmy• 11 years ago

Very skeptical of this idea. Were more than 10% of humans were in "extreme poverty" when we lived as hunter-gatherers? Were all humans in "extreme poverty" at that time?

"Extreme poverty" is caused when capitalism invades an area, appropriates all assets, and then the people basically either have to sell themselves into extremely-low-paid labor or starve.

wyager2• 11 years ago

"Extreme poverty" is caused when capitalism invades an area,

I take it you haven't read any pre-industrial-revolution history books lately?

Arnt• 11 years ago

Two comments: You could make the same point about nobility, all the way back to the rulers of the first cities. And hunter-gatherers too live in dire poverty when the hunting and gathering fails, as it does some years. Fewer than 10% of years?

raymondgh2• 11 years ago

Agreed! First time below 10% since mankind's creation of poverty. I can't comment on the causality of capitalism, but I agree with Mandela that poverty is manmade.

wyager2• 11 years ago

Are you one of those people who believes in the biblical history where people lived to be 200 years old and such?

At what point in the past was the average person better off than they are now?

afsina7• 11 years ago

A suggested read: A short history of man, Progress and decline. From Hans Herman Hoppe.

http://www.hanshoppe.com/2015/03/a-short-history-of-man-prog...

rmah• 11 years ago

Before the industrial revolution, 90%+ of people lived in "extreme poverty" (as we would describe it today). Note, "extreme poverty" does not mean "extreme misery" nor does it necessarily mean "hungry". People can be in poverty and fairly happy (or the reverse).

sp332• 11 years ago

Is it because they all died?

andrewmutz• 11 years ago

This is an issue where there is widespread misunderstanding. Here is a great opinion piece about how the way news is reported contributes to this chronic misinformation:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/opinion/nicholas-kristof-t...

"One survey found that two-thirds of Americans believed that the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost doubled over the last 20 years. Another 29 percent believed that the proportion had remained roughly the same.

"That’s 95 percent of Americans — who are utterly wrong. In fact, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty hasn’t doubled or remained the same. It has fallen by more than half..."

jessaustin3• 11 years ago

There might be people who think reducing extreme poverty is more important than telling the truth about it. That is certainly the case with several other issues...

happyscrappy2• 11 years ago

Dishonest for a good cause, wonderful, they have now lost the high ground.

jdietrich• 11 years ago

It is far from clear that such a course of action is effective. Decision-making is rarely improved by inaccurate information. The belief that global poverty is worsening could easily lead to the conclusion that the problem is intractable, or that our efforts to reduce poverty are not in fact effective; conversely, the belief that poverty is being reduced can lead to the conclusion that what we are doing is effective, and we should do more of it.

api3• 11 years ago

That's because the experience for the American middle class has during this same period been wage stagnation coupled with inflation in food, energy, housing, medicine, and tuition. The American middle class finds it difficult to believe things are getting better around the world because for them it's been getting worse since about 1970.

jahnu• 11 years ago

wage stagnation coupled with inflation in food, energy, housing, medicine, and tuition

Is that wage stagnation not adjusted for inflation?

hackuser• 11 years ago

There's also the conservative rhetoric of alarmism and pessimism, which supports cutting back and doing nothing.

ef43• 11 years ago

Yes. And the two facts are not disconnected.

We are seeing global inequality fall to unprecedented lows. If you're in the top 5% (which the American middle class definitely is), then less inequality feels bad to you.

Global wages growth is quite high, it's just happening in places that need it way more than rich westerners do, as much as that sucks for rich westerners.

ZenoArrow• 11 years ago

Some would argue that the two are linked... wealth from the middle classes being transferred to the extremely poor. The wealth of the rich doesn't seem to be shrinking.

notahacker3• 11 years ago

I'd say the 95% of Americans were utterly right if you define poverty as "a standard of living which anyone raised in America would consider to be extreme poverty", as opposed to "below the income threshold of the latest World Bank redefinition", in which a person earning 10 cents per hour needs only the energy to work 90 hours per week to bootstrap their way out of extreme poverty...

vidarh9• 11 years ago

Notably, assuming the linked PDF report of the survey is correct, when asking the question they appear to not have given any supplemental information such as a definition of extreme poverty. Which means the only thing the survey is good for is measuring peoples perception of what will likely be a very nebulous concept for most of them (e.g. I have no idea how much essentials you could get for $1.9 a day if you were actually forced to be cautious)

BookmarkSaver2• 11 years ago

No...

The point of the survey is that 95% of Americans thought things were getting worse or staying the same.

Regardless of what metric you are using, they are dead wrong. Things are getting much, much better. You are arguing about the specific definitions and qualifications of the terms. You are ignoring what the results of the survey are actually saying about the perception of Americans.

datashovel• 11 years ago

I think another pertinent point would be that until currency existed poverty did not exist. Humans have managed to exist (and in many cases thrive) on this planet for at least hundreds of thousands of years, and by some accounts millions of years. Only the smallest fraction of that time has currency (and thus poverty) existed. Not that barter / exchange did not happen, but official fiat currency certainly didn't exist. And even if people possessed a commodity for trade, they didn't need to use it to survive.

I don't have numbers on it, but would love to know if any studies have been done. My hunch is that, at the lowest levels of income across the planet, actually "needing money" to survive probably hurts their livelihood more than it helps.

petervandijck• 11 years ago

"until currency existed poverty did not exist" -> surely if your kids die of hunger, we can call that poverty?

tkinom• 11 years ago

Does the "Amish" fit into the poor or Extreme poverty category? (by US standard)

I believe they are happier than most of the population. Gov might not like them too much as their contribution to gdp/Tax might be less than the "normal" folks. On the other hand, their demand on "gov service" should be a lot less too.

TheCoelacanth• 11 years ago

What makes you think that Amish are poor? Many of them are quite wealthy.

notdonspaulding2• 11 years ago

I don't think the GP was saying the Amish are poor per se.

I think the GP's point is that, from the perspective of the survey, the Amish's income and/or expenditures might look the same as someone in poverty, even though their quality of life is much better.

henryaj• 11 years ago

It's incredibly exciting to think that an end to global poverty could be in sight.

Shameless plug: GiveWell [0] and Giving What We Can [1] are non-profits that evaluate the effectiveness of development and global poverty charities. Some are hundreds or thousands of times as effective as others when it comes to saving and extending lives.

Those groups help you decide where your money should go to maximise your impact.

[0] http://www.givewell.org/

[1] http://givingwhatwecan.org/

marincounty• 11 years ago

Two days ago we had an article about this topic, maybe the same article?

This article claims they just changed the baseline poverty rate. I think they changed other numbers, but can't prove it.

Two days ago, I went to the world bank calculator and the poverty calculations were based on $1.25. I and other HN'ers noticed the calculator didn't seem to account for inflation.

Two days ago I played around with the calculator and used $1.90 and $2.00 as a "the input for the poverty line". I was getting final poverty levels that were doubling. With my numbers the poverty level was not below 10%.

I did the same experiment today, and someone updated all the numbers, or just changed them? Or, I my memory is wrong. (I have not confirmed this on The wayback machine.)

My point is two days ago at $1.90 the poverty rate was close to 20%? Today, my calculations are not close to what they were two days ago?

http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm?1

DigitalSea• 11 years ago

I hate to sound cynical here, but is it possible that "extreme poverty" is expected to drop below 10% because many of those unfortunately in such a bracket have low life expectancy due to poor diet and living conditions? I hope not.

pvaldes• 11 years ago

I was thinking the same. Maybe poors are dying faster than before.

Or maybe the world bank is simply wrong.

"The number of people in extreme powerty could be greatly underestimated": http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2015/...

lkbm3• 11 years ago

Access to clean water has improved. Infant mortality has dropped. Infectious disease rates have dropped.

Nope. It's because poor people are getting access to better infrastructure, better healthcare, better education, and better job opportunities.

waroc• 11 years ago

While the statistics are updated, the definition of "extreme poverty" just fails to keep up. The moment people have food, they want lots of food, then they want delicious food, then they want more exclusive food, and so on. There'd be no problem if the supply of food (resources) can keep up with human's greed, which never happens.

gpestana2• 11 years ago

According to this article what's the extreme poverty threshold for World Bank, after all? It says first:

"Extreme poverty has long been defined as living on or below $1.25 a day, but the World Bank’s adjustment now sets the poverty line at $1.90 a day."

And then, at the end:

"The World Bank first introduced a global poverty line in 1990, setting it at $1 a day. It was adjusted last in 2008, when the group raised it to $1.25 a day."

Got a bit confused.

gpestana2• 11 years ago

More info about it (and clearer) here: http://data.worldbank.org/news/extreme-poverty-rates-continu...

'Extreme poverty' to fall below 10% of world population for first time

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