[plesn]

This gives some hope, especially the Gini graph. I'll wait for more information to have a more definitive opinion though as autonomy is not always well captured in those quantitative data.

For example if more people live in big cities, is this growth enough ? (1$ can mean something different : in New York $400 certainly makes you poor…). Is this growth compensating former hidden markets, like self food producing and local non monetary exchanges ? (you can sell cotton and have more money, while still having it harder to buy food). Do their subsistance depend more or less on external factors like speculation ? Are there less wars/civil wars ?

[redwood]

Right: how do they calculate the <$1/day rate. Its nearly inverse relationship with the GDP per capita graph implies that deep down in the data the basis for this $1/day rate could essentially be the GDP rate divided by population, or similar. I.e. without seeing where that data comes from this is a real possibility. However I would assume these folks are doing a rigorous analysis so this is probably unlikely.

[Kliment]

Since they point out this inverse relationship as remarkable, I don't suppose there is an expected relationship of this sort between the two. Certainly there would be a negative correlation, but I don't believe they are coming from the same data.