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by cmdkeen
3836 days ago
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We've made over a billion of the poorest of the poor less poor - that is a massive achievement. The crucial thing about that being less poor is that they are then not in subsistence mode and able to consider things like educating their children, engaging in capitalism, i.e. economic activity which can increase their wealth further rather than merely trying to stay alive. Your quotes highlighting the problems of SSA move quickly into using percentages of an overall number that has decreased - it acknowledges that in all other regions in the world poverty has fallen dramatically, especially in China where their middle class is now around 340 million. |
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That's a pretty meaningless claim. Again, the data you're leaning on to say that is using an exceptionally low bar, and it doesn't really take into account regional economic differences. The whole reason the World Bank had to raise it to $1.90 a day from $1.25 a day was because in many parts of the developing world, $1.90 a day buys you less than $1.25 did at the start of the measurements!
More importantly, $1.91 a day still makes for a pretty miserable life anywhere in the world. You're not magically on a trajectory to the middle class. You may be dying of waterborne illnesses and malnutrition, but you're not absolutely poor by World Bank standards!
The claim that there are far fewer poor people from 1820 to present is more reasonable, but the problem there is that the gains mostly came from things like "industrialization", which were big, one-time gains that, again, accrued mainly to the winners.