How do you think developing counties come up with their poverty lines? This new international number is just the median of those…

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dudeinjapan 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

There should be a universal human standard to define what extreme poverty is--i.e. the amount needed to secure food, shelter, and clothing--and then that amount should be assessed country-by-country (or region-by-region) by an independent body. The number of $3 per day is well above the "basic needs" threshold in some of the poorest countries, and well below it in the US, for example.

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ivape 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Makes you wonder what the real purpose of that number was. Must have served some agenda, because saying some people live on less than $3 (when it's not a fair statement) definitely could serve a purpose.

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owebmaster 3 days ago | parent [-]

How is that not a fair statement?

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ivape 3 days ago | parent [-]

$3 USD can buy you basic things per day like food, but it won’t buy you that in America, for example. It’s not a fair metric at all.

$3 buys you various foods in various parts of the world, which would not put you in abject poverty.

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owebmaster 3 days ago | parent [-]

$3 a day makes you filthy poor in South America and probably everywhere besides India but there are still poorer people there.

	▲	ivape 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Can’t look at it like that. Does the person buy food and basics per day? Then don’t worry about what the dollar amount equates to. It’s a ridiculous metric when it comes to measuring abject poverty.

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duskwuff 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is addressed in the article - see the section titled "Estimating comparable national distributions". (In short: income is being scaled relative to purchasing power parity.)

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automatic6131 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Usually they choose a deliberately stupid measurement such as "household income below a percentage of the median wage".

This is stupid for many reasons, including (but not limited to): non-monetary, in-kind benefits being excluded, perverse outcomes such as a decline in median wages "reducing poverty" and just about guaranteed continuation of this "poverty". So left wing politicians LOVE it. It's an everlasting cudgel that can never be fixed.

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DiogenesKynikos 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's fairly easy to fix, as long as you are willing to do what it takes to address income inequality. Reduce the Gini coefficient and poverty decreases.

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automatic6131 4 days ago | parent [-]

That's actually my point: if you take (e.g.) 65% of median income, in a world with a Gini coefficient of 1 - perfect inequality - the rate of poverty is 0%.

	▲	DiogenesKynikos 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		But that's an edge case that will never occur in reality.

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abdullahkhalids 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> non-monetary, in-kind benefits being excluded

This seems sane. The real question one should ask is, how many people can earn a living that allows them to meet basic needs, without state support?

You can have a separate figure that out of the number of poor people (like defined in the last sentence), how many are no longer poor with state support?

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kingkawn 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

all your examples would not add up to someone who meets the standards for poverty not in real world terms being too poor to live well