[ajmadesc]

The irony of this comment is you say

> The global poverty line has been on steady decline

That's about right. We measure poverty as less than $2 per day. It's an arbitrary number. It would need to be $7.50 to prevent malnutrition and lower than 50% mortality. If we use the 7.50 mark the number of people in poverty has increased dramatically since the 80s.

[prepend]

> If we use the 7.50 mark the number of people in poverty has increased dramatically since the 80s.

This seems surprising to me. What do you think is the best source for me to learn about this metric? I found a lot of info on the methodology behind $1.9/day [0] but couldn’t find much by looking for the $7.50/day mark and how it has changed over time.

I found this guardian article referencing $7.4/day [1] but the link they give to Peter Edward on an ethical poverty line doesn’t work. When I search for Edward’s concept I find papers from him [2] but they seem to reference $2/day.

Edit: I was able to find a gapminder analysis [3]. They break income into four groups, less than $2, less than $8, less than $32, more. The shift in poverty is still positive so I’m not sure what measure is being used to show 1B more under $7.5/day. This may be due to demographic trends where that group is growing faster. It is important to consider the overall proportion, not just absolute number, as well as the alternative of where they would have been (ie, a billion under $7.50 is better than a billion under $1.9).

But it’s hard to discuss without source data and methods.

[0] http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/methodology.aspx [1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals... [2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/014365905004327... [3] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2020;;&ch...

[adamcstephens]

https://www.jasonhickel.org/the-divide

The author addresses this question, along with how the UN has continually shifted the goal posts to reinforce the narrative that poverty has been reduced.

[prepend]

Thanks for replying, I’ll check out this book and learn about how it’s measuring poverty. The concept seems about inequality though, that is different (although important) than poverty.

This quote mixes the two concepts “ Since 1960, the income gap between the North and South has roughly tripled in size. Today 4.3 billion people, 60 per cent of the world's population, live on less than $5 per day.” and doesn’t provide context on whether the percent of the worlds population living in less than $5/day is better or worse than in 1960.

[adamcstephens]

Right, the book overall is about global inequality, but he definitely addresses the defined poverty thresholds. These thresholds are used by the wealthier countries to claim an improvement in people’s lives, while they’re gaming the numbers to show a decrease in poverty.

Trying to boil down a very diverse global population, which may or may not even be paid, into a single $/day seems a bit ridiculous to me personally.

[prepend]

> Trying to boil down a very diverse global population, which may or may not even be paid, into a single $/day seems a bit ridiculous to me personally.

This is not the method described in the world bank web site. I don’t think the intent is to boil down to a single measure.

Tracking data globally is really challenging, so a consistent and meaningful measure is required to even have a hope of a perspective across countries. It’s useful in eradicating poverty to both measure progress or failure as well as to prioritize investment for areas of greatest need.

This also isn’t the only measure of poverty as there’s many others and there’s quite a bit of literature in global health on other measures as well.

That being said, I think there is room for improvement both in developing more useful metrics as well as improving accuracy of measures.

[nearbuy]

That doesn't sound right. Do you have a source for that?

What does 50% mortality mean here?