Is this really an improvement, or are more people plugged into our global economic system? Here's a hypothetical story. All names & circumstances are fiction.
Take Tan Bao, who lived in a pastoral barter system in his homeland in north-western China. Tan's family had the same trade over many generations. Their flock consisted of 63 sheep, 3 horses, 28 geese, 6 ducks.
Tan Bao made $0, yet was able to support his family. Everybody pitched in to subsist.
Now developers bought the land that Tan Bao's family has lived on. Tan Bao & his family are evicted. They move to Xi'an. Now, Tan Bao makes $2 a day working in a shoe factory.
Hooray! Tan Bao is no longer living in extreme poverty. Yet he & his family miss their ancestral homeland & old way of life.
That's an interesting point. I think that maybe what you're asking for is supplemental indicators such as number of people regularly getting the correct number of calories, have shelter, access to medical care and education. However, those supplemental indicators themselves don't tell you much about how much opportunity people have, of which economic indicators are a proxy for.
Situations like these are an inescapable consequence of population growth. As the number of humans increases, there will inevitably be less space allocated to inefficient activity, where efficiency is determined by an activity's contribution toward sustaining the larger population. Herding 63 sheep is not as efficient as housing 5000 people or stockyarding 500 pigs.
Growth is not 100% to blame, but growth is a sufficient cause for your story. It's worth tracking how well humanity copes with these inevitable changes.
When I was young I remember most of my country was considered extreme poverty, but to be honest I was never really hungry, there was no people dying of hunger, people were happy and they appreciated little things. I would not like to see those times come back, but while it was difficult for everyone, it was easily survivable by just doing some jobs.
I'm not sure where you're from, but my understanding is that "extreme poverty" literally means that people are dying of hunger. So, if you are able to consistently secure food, you're not living in extreme poverty, but of course, you may still be very, very poor.
I think they try to take in to account the income from farming to avoid that sort of miscalculation. Obviously there's a lot of leeway as to how to account for that stuff but anecdotally I think things have improved a lot. Especially in China. I was there around 1982 and people were living on gruel and breaking rocks with hammers to make a living, a bit like you'd imagine a prison gang. Now it's quite like the west in terms of living conditions for most.
You raise another angle on wealth and income, and one that savvy researchers do look at. I don't know if development economists have a word for it, but I think of it as stability, or a non-monetary safety net.
I first was exposed to this idea in Kenya; a friend was losing his job, and I asked what his plan was, knowing that wages are low, and so on. He said worst case, he and his wife would move back to the family farm (un-mortgaged) and build out their cash crops.
Although his PPP-adjusted income was lower, lower middle class by American standards, he had something almost nobody under 50 in the 97th percentile has in America; a food and shelter safety net that was fairly resilient, and at the very least, not debt-ridden.
In real life, Tan Bao wouldn't have been evicted, he would have preferred the opportunity to accumulate money instead of not accumulating money, despite the temporary lower quality of life working in the factory. I'd say he has less poverty now. He can still survive but can also save.
In all seriousness, can somebody please help me understand what can be bought for $1.9 and how they came up with this arbitrary number?! I don't know if anybody can even get (or cook) one full meal a day for that... maybe I'm missing something?
Why even have such a measure unless it's going to be at least $10/day as one likely needs at least that much just to feed themselves the cheapest possible food they can find.
For example, in India $0.3 has about the same purchasing power as $1 in the US. US$1.9/day is thus about Rs 400/day in India, which is survivable. For example, a simple meal at a food stall will be under Rs 100.
Like, I'm not trying to be snarky, there's a lot of conversions going on there that aren't explicated. My takeaway is that if you can buy food and little else, that's poverty, right? Or no?
Well, if you have a home and can cook food 400 Rs/day isn't too bad. (With 100 Rs you can get some vegetables more than a kilo of rice) Buying from a food stall is going to be somewhat more expensive than cooking food yourself. And food stall prices vary depending on quality of the food.
Also, poverty definitions vary.
EDIT: 400 Rs/day = 12000 Rs/month which isn't horrible.
I was born and brought up in India. When I was going to school in 1990, my dad used to earn around 6,000 INR / month (120$/month, exchange rate was 50 back then). We ate out probably once every few months but even then, the salary was enough to feed family of 5 and send me and my sisters to school. I think you lack the perspective on how poor India and China is.
It was simply a correction to the following portion: "6,000 INR / month (120$/month, exchange rate was 50 back then)". Assuming the accuracy of the salary, it appears the following is more accurate: "6,000 INR / month (300$/month, exchange rate was 20 back then)".
That's enough for 50 servings, meaning you could feed yourself for $0.20 a day. Of course this ignores PPP, malnutrition and other factors, but don't underestimate how cheap food actually is.
A few years ago, I realized that several Asian cuisines are actually very cheap. Indian dishes are a great illustration of how you can make wonderfully tasty meals with very little of the expensive ingredients, and cheaper than fast food—not to mention way healthier.
It's not hard to be cheaper than fast food, other than possibly dollar/value menus.
All of the "staples" are insanely cheap - potatos, rice, etc. Most vegetables are as well. Toss in som emeat of whatever was on sale and you can easily cook a meal for 4 for 10 dollars, if not quite a bit cheaper.
Exactly. You just have to look past the 'big steak with some chips' meals, and appreciate something with staples plus a smaller portion of meat (e.g., stirfry, pasta, curry/stew bulked with potatoes).
Frozen veggies are healthier and cheaper. Plus you get to cook them to your taste, rather than what the canner decides (cooking too long, adding salts, etc.)
Frozen veggies definitely win if you have access to refrigeration -> access to energy. Canning is a revolutionary preservation technique in that it allows for long-term storage of perishables at room temperature.
1lb of raw rice has ~1200 calories, so 5lb has ~6000 calories, so a person needs about 2.5lbs per day.
At 200 calories per cup of cooked rice, you'd need 1.5 servings to get close to a "cheeseburger equivalent" meal in calories, and my "cheeseburger equivalent" system gives you 6-7 cheeseburgers per day at about 350 calories each. This means a person is eating 9-10 cups of rice per day.
You forget that the US is an extremely expensive place to live relative to countries like India and China where enormous %s of the world population lives. $1.90 goes a long way in those places.
> Why even have such a measure unless it's going to be at least $10/day as one likely needs at least that much just to feed themselves the cheapest possible food they can find.
Out of touch much? While studying, I fed myself with about $10-15 a week, and I ate better quality food than most people. I live in a place where food is more expensive than the US.
You can buy the calories you need per day for individual cents, if you buy potatoes in bulk. Above that, buy basic ingredients in large quantities, and you will have plenty of money left for fresh greens to top off you meals. Don't eat meat in every meal, and meat should always be a flavoring, not what makes up most of the meal.
$1.9 doesn't afford you a comfortable life anywhere, but in the developing world, it's enough to not fear starvation. And that fear is a big part of being "extremely poor".
I guess I could get by on $1.90 per day for food in the US if I had to, but it would really suck.
But the article is about extreme poverty. People who don't know if they're going to survive the next week or month. In the developing world, $1.90 per day provides just enough security that you're pretty sure you won't starve next week.
It's pretty damn bleak, but the fact is that a lot of people live in conditions where they know they may starve in the near future, and if fewer people live in those conditions, that's important.
The reason why it's $1.90 is because extreme poverty was pegged at a dollar per day by the World Bank in 1993 which has risen due to inflation to $1.90. There's nothing magical about the number, it simply provides a convenient baseline for comparisons to be made.
PS You need to do the shopping, or learn to cook, $1.90 is very easy to feed people. But obviously it also about other things like food security and important stuff like happiness.
Ahem, money == interest-bearing debt created in a computer by private, non-democratic institutions for maximum profit, in case someone missed that little glitch in the system.
As I said, banks are creating money, digital debt credits, in their computers. That money is largely regarded as equal to currency in the prevailing global financial system, since everyone uses the banks transaction system (SWIFT, Visa, etc) and trusts the value of the debt credits.
The real currency are the notes and coins, the "legal tender" printed by the government, which comprises less than 3% of the money supply.
How come nobody has ever heard the term "extreme poverty" as a sensible metric before? Even forgetting the fact that defining extreme poverty as an absolute number is completely meaningless, they had to change the metric numerous times to show a positive result.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/exposing-gr...
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadTake Tan Bao, who lived in a pastoral barter system in his homeland in north-western China. Tan's family had the same trade over many generations. Their flock consisted of 63 sheep, 3 horses, 28 geese, 6 ducks.
Tan Bao made $0, yet was able to support his family. Everybody pitched in to subsist.
Now developers bought the land that Tan Bao's family has lived on. Tan Bao & his family are evicted. They move to Xi'an. Now, Tan Bao makes $2 a day working in a shoe factory.
Hooray! Tan Bao is no longer living in extreme poverty. Yet he & his family miss their ancestral homeland & old way of life.
Growth is not 100% to blame, but growth is a sufficient cause for your story. It's worth tracking how well humanity copes with these inevitable changes.
I first was exposed to this idea in Kenya; a friend was losing his job, and I asked what his plan was, knowing that wages are low, and so on. He said worst case, he and his wife would move back to the family farm (un-mortgaged) and build out their cash crops.
Although his PPP-adjusted income was lower, lower middle class by American standards, he had something almost nobody under 50 in the 97th percentile has in America; a food and shelter safety net that was fairly resilient, and at the very least, not debt-ridden.
Why even have such a measure unless it's going to be at least $10/day as one likely needs at least that much just to feed themselves the cheapest possible food they can find.
For example, in India $0.3 has about the same purchasing power as $1 in the US. US$1.9/day is thus about Rs 400/day in India, which is survivable. For example, a simple meal at a food stall will be under Rs 100.
Also, poverty definitions vary.
EDIT: 400 Rs/day = 12000 Rs/month which isn't horrible.
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf166/aconf166-9.htm
That's enough for 50 servings, meaning you could feed yourself for $0.20 a day. Of course this ignores PPP, malnutrition and other factors, but don't underestimate how cheap food actually is.
All of the "staples" are insanely cheap - potatos, rice, etc. Most vegetables are as well. Toss in som emeat of whatever was on sale and you can easily cook a meal for 4 for 10 dollars, if not quite a bit cheaper.
http://www.heathernicholds.com/nutrition/frozen-vs-canned-ve...
At 200 calories per cup of cooked rice, you'd need 1.5 servings to get close to a "cheeseburger equivalent" meal in calories, and my "cheeseburger equivalent" system gives you 6-7 cheeseburgers per day at about 350 calories each. This means a person is eating 9-10 cups of rice per day.
That is a LOT of rice.
Out of touch much? While studying, I fed myself with about $10-15 a week, and I ate better quality food than most people. I live in a place where food is more expensive than the US.
You can buy the calories you need per day for individual cents, if you buy potatoes in bulk. Above that, buy basic ingredients in large quantities, and you will have plenty of money left for fresh greens to top off you meals. Don't eat meat in every meal, and meat should always be a flavoring, not what makes up most of the meal.
$1.9 doesn't afford you a comfortable life anywhere, but in the developing world, it's enough to not fear starvation. And that fear is a big part of being "extremely poor".
And I did not say this is the only problem with poverty.
But the article is about extreme poverty. People who don't know if they're going to survive the next week or month. In the developing world, $1.90 per day provides just enough security that you're pretty sure you won't starve next week.
It's pretty damn bleak, but the fact is that a lot of people live in conditions where they know they may starve in the near future, and if fewer people live in those conditions, that's important.
http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/international-pov...
PS You need to do the shopping, or learn to cook, $1.90 is very easy to feed people. But obviously it also about other things like food security and important stuff like happiness.
The real currency are the notes and coins, the "legal tender" printed by the government, which comprises less than 3% of the money supply.
Even taking into account the democratic and freedom deficits, we have to admit that the achievements of the Chinese are impressive.
Also a country is awarded money if it displays good metrics even if they don't make any sense. https://books.google.gr/books?id=rH5UCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT178&lpg=P...