According TFA the number of people in extreme poverty dropped when using the old IPL value, and went up with the new value.
So politically, no NGO wants to say poverty decreased, because that might reduce urgency, and thus priority. So moving the goalposts means a 50% increase in poverty instead of a 20% decrease in poverty. Which one benefits your mission more?
That's not to say the revision of the IPL was wrong. But it does further the mission. Did the improved statistical methods trigger the IPL revision? It's hard to tell without internal world bank docs. I'll bet it did.
Because the nicely shaped bell curves used in TFA are not at all what the distribution actually looks like. There is a significant right-skew. Don't miss the log-scale on x-axis in the first few graphs as well.
datadrivenangel 2 hours ago [-]
"The poverty line has increased in real terms. And with it, so have the World Bank’s estimates of extreme poverty. 125 million people who would not have been counted as extremely poor before June are now included."
I think this is a good change, but maybe would be better to leave the old standard alone in real terms and then make a new category? "the poor will always be with you"
"the poor will always be with you"
btilly 24 minutes ago [-]
And yet, to an amazing extent, they aren't.
If you look back in 200 years, poor people starving to death was simply an accepted fact of life. Today, poor people get fat. Do their lives suck? Absolutely! Just look at the craziness around housing. But in terms of resources per person available to the poor? Very few of us realize how good we've got it.
The extreme poverty line has remained essentially the same (adjusted for inflation) for a few decades. Projecting backwards in time, most people in every country used to be in extreme poverty. We are on track to eliminating extreme poverty within our lifetimes. They've adjusted the poverty line upwards. But just watch, life keeps on improving.
I am not a fan of their initial "Global Income Distribution" curve. if you take the actual data at the bottom of the article and plot it; it does not make anything the resembles a standard distribution as portrayed. It could be an infographic, it could be different axis, who knows, but portraying a standard distribution is wrong if you have an outlying skew in your distribution. Everything under $40 is a standard distribution, but above $40 represents the same volume of people as the average skewing any sort of plotting.
For 2025 only
Global People | Dollars
1,183,873,832 | above $40
389,144,677 | $30-$40
681,087,495 | $20-$30
1,647,364,177 | $10-$20
1,134,291,724 | $7-$10
1,170,170,455 | $5-$7
1,185,828,184 | $3-$5
700,440,541 | $1-$3
107,765,635 | <$1
nilstycho 4 minutes ago [-]
The x-axis isn't "income", it's "log income".
pc86 1 hours ago [-]
I wish these numbers were percentile relative to the local economy and not in made-up "international dollars."
It means absolutely nothing that 1.1B people live on $3-5/day and a different 1.1B live on $5-7. Can you survive in the local economy on $2/day? Then $4/day is not that bad, and $7/day is doing pretty well.
vharuck 6 minutes ago [-]
I'm no international poverty economist, but I imagine lower income relative to neighboring countries would still have some effect. For instance, if a poor country suffers a famine in its staple crop, can that government and its citizens afford to import food?
vlovich123 36 minutes ago [-]
That’s a fair criticism but given how the economy has globalized, people also exploit that discrepancy by hiring remote workers abroad so it’s not completely irrelevant
cbeach 2 hours ago [-]
The poverty rate should be based on an absolute amount, adjusted for inflation in the staples, like food and shelter.
Any other kind of adjustment (like, for example, this latest intervention by the World Bank) is political in nature.
We should disregard any statistical data whose collection is politically biased.
Hilift 28 minutes ago [-]
Never happen. Defining and measuring poverty is a sensitive topic with juked stats in every country. The UK for example, has a poverty rate of 46% for families with three or more children. The poverty rate for Pakistani households is 47%. Around 7% of the UK is considered destitute. This data is rarely discussed because it is too unpleasant, and no-one wants to connect the inability to fund the national budget with the lack of money. The US does the same with occasional outlandish claims of "lifting nn% people out of poverty" by spending on programs that usually don't last.
isbwkisbakadqv 2 hours ago [-]
How do you think developing counties come up with their poverty lines? This new international number is just the median of those…
dudeinjapan 1 hours ago [-]
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.
automatic6131 2 hours ago [-]
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.
DiogenesKynikos 1 hours ago [-]
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.
automatic6131 15 minutes ago [-]
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 12 minutes ago [-]
But that's an edge case that will never occur in reality.
kingkawn 1 hours ago [-]
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
According TFA the number of people in extreme poverty dropped when using the old IPL value, and went up with the new value.
So politically, no NGO wants to say poverty decreased, because that might reduce urgency, and thus priority. So moving the goalposts means a 50% increase in poverty instead of a 20% decrease in poverty. Which one benefits your mission more?
That's not to say the revision of the IPL was wrong. But it does further the mission. Did the improved statistical methods trigger the IPL revision? It's hard to tell without internal world bank docs. I'll bet it did.
Because the nicely shaped bell curves used in TFA are not at all what the distribution actually looks like. There is a significant right-skew. Don't miss the log-scale on x-axis in the first few graphs as well.
I think this is a good change, but maybe would be better to leave the old standard alone in real terms and then make a new category? "the poor will always be with you"
"the poor will always be with you"
If you look back in 200 years, poor people starving to death was simply an accepted fact of life. Today, poor people get fat. Do their lives suck? Absolutely! Just look at the craziness around housing. But in terms of resources per person available to the poor? Very few of us realize how good we've got it.
The extreme poverty line has remained essentially the same (adjusted for inflation) for a few decades. Projecting backwards in time, most people in every country used to be in extreme poverty. We are on track to eliminating extreme poverty within our lifetimes. They've adjusted the poverty line upwards. But just watch, life keeps on improving.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/obesity-vs-gdp
For 2025 only
Global People | Dollars
1,183,873,832 | above $40
389,144,677 | $30-$40
681,087,495 | $20-$30
1,647,364,177 | $10-$20
1,134,291,724 | $7-$10
1,170,170,455 | $5-$7
1,185,828,184 | $3-$5
700,440,541 | $1-$3
107,765,635 | <$1
It means absolutely nothing that 1.1B people live on $3-5/day and a different 1.1B live on $5-7. Can you survive in the local economy on $2/day? Then $4/day is not that bad, and $7/day is doing pretty well.
Any other kind of adjustment (like, for example, this latest intervention by the World Bank) is political in nature.
We should disregard any statistical data whose collection is politically biased.
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.