World's 'extremely poor' to fall below 10 percent of global population: World Bank

[Little Tich]

Source: Yahoo! News / Reuters

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The number of people living in extreme poverty is likely to fall for the first time below 10 percent of the world's population in 2015, the World Bank said on Sunday as it revised its benchmark for measuring the problem.

Extreme poverty has long been defined as living on or below $1.25 a day, but the World Bank's adjustment now sets the poverty line at $1.90 a day.

The Bank said the change reflects new data on differences in the cost of living across countries, while preserving the real purchasing power of the previous yardstick.

Using the new benchmark, the World Bank projects that 702 million people or 9.6 percent of the world's population will be living in extreme poverty in 2015, down from 902 million people or 12.8 percent of the global population in 2012.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/worlds-extremely-poor-fall-below-10-percent-global-212256702--business.html

[forest444]

1. If indeed accurate, that's very good news.

But let's not forget that for most of the world's poor, lack of access to basic services is as great a problem or greater than their paltry incomes.

Measured in those parameters, the percentage of poor in this world is still 60% or more.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/22/_60_percent_of_the_world_population_still_without_toilets.html

[The2ndWheel]

2. Which is why there's no fix to our environmental issues

[loudsue]

3. And the world bank is a huge part of the problem. And they get to decide who's poor?

[chervilant]

4. Yeah, right...

"Hey look, guys, if we change the benchmark, we can announce that extreme poverty is down! Let's do it!"

I can just imagine the convo that preceded that revised benchmark...

[forest444]

7. Bingo.

Plus, they disingenuously limit themselves to estimating income poverty (and at $1.90 per person per day - $700 a year - at U.S. cost basis!).

This has the result of both understating poverty ("Look, ma! Just 10% of humanity is poor now!&quot , and distracting the public from what really makes the extreme poor, poor - and that lack of access to health, to education, and to infrastructure and public services. Time was when the World Bank primarily looked at those parameters to measure world poverty - until the globalization crowd took it over in the '90s, of course.

The fact remains that, measured by conditions, probably 60% or more of the world's population is poor. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/22/_60_percent_of_the_world_population_still_without_toilets.html

[happyslug]

5. So by going form $1.25 a day to $1.90 a day the percentage dropped from 12.8% to 9.6%

Thus by going form $456.25 per YEAR to $693.50 a YEAR, the World bank managed to get the extreme poverty level below 10% of the world population.

Think about it, living on less the $700 a year. Can you do it? Now, given most of these people live in the same areas of the world, a lot of LOCAL PRICED GOODS are much lower then what we pay, but anything traded on a WORLD WIDE LEVEL they still have to pay for, i.e. Gasoline, imported food, etc., they must pay what we pay or do without.

Thus these people have no access to any means of transportation other then livestock (and then only burros or horses that can survive on locally raised crops). They can NOT even afford a bicycle or shoes other then what is made locally (No high grade tennis shoes for these people, unless it is dumped on them as many trade named protected show are, when it is found the shoes makers did not for the right to use the trade name).

Worse, the "efforts" to help such people tend to back fire, for example, most of these people need to be able to sell their local crops, but do to subsidized exports from the US and Europe, imported food is cheaper then locally raised food. Thus they can not even get a decent price for the crops they raise. What people have said for years is countries in Africa and Asia should FORBID imports of these surplus food to force up local food prices to get their peasants from being the lowest paid people in the World.

One big problem for these third world countries is that they want to export items grown in their country to Europe and the US, but that takes out of production land that can be used to raise food locally. These export crops are big business to the ruling elites of these nations and thus encouraged, even as the poor suffer due to lack of locally raised crops.

This is a problem throughout the third world, crops are raised for exports to pay off foreign loans. These crops are planted instead of crops for local consumption and most of the money from these large farms go to the ruling elite. The ruling elite keep their urban population happy by giving them free to subsidized food, imported from Europe and the US as those two areas get rid of excess farm production. This makes the rural peasants poorer for they cost to produce their food exceeds the price of the food being given away.

This is a problem from Egypt to South Africa and into India, Pakistan and even Argentina and Brazil. To solve the problem of the peasant you have to increase what he gets for his crops, but to do so you have to cut out imports from grain exporting countries like the US and Europe (And to a lesser extent grain exports from Poland, Ukraine and Russia). This solution makes urban food prices increase and the ruling elite fears such a price increase for the urban poor are close enough to ruling elite to be able to do a successful revolution (The ruling elite have read Marx and accept it is the urban poor that is to be feared NOT the rural Peasants).

The main cause of the Arab Spring was Russia had a bad harvest and Putin FORBADE food exports to keep domestic food prices low. This had the result of a massive increase in food in the third world, and the resulting unrest that lead to the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, massive increase in unrest in the Persian Gulf States (put down by Saudi Arabia) and the start of the unrest in Syria. All of these unrest went different direction, but all seems to have started due to a massive increase in the price of food in Urban Centers (and then NOT of Bread itself, but things that people eat with bread, Egypt kept the price of bread very low during that time period, but had no controls over the prices of other items people eat with bread and it was those prices that caused the people to revolt).

Don't worry, I have read Russia is having another bad year for its winter wheat crop, Russia will have enough to feed itself but will not be able to export. The Ukraine seems to be under similar pressure, thus if the US Wheat Crop is anything less then a bumper crop, we may see unrest next summer.

[trillion]

6. It depends on where you live, whether you can live un under $700 a year. A large part of the world

does live under that and do not consider themselves poor. Poverty is created by stealing resources. For every village in Africa that is without water there is someone who came and took their water - usually a busiiness or a government redirecting the water to large businesses. The communities every where in the world did not become communities without water. Food is the exact same way. There was a good talk on Tech Ed about this. I can't remember what it was named, but some woman and her team set out to look at extreme poverty and found out in every case it because their resources were taken.

That said, one of the reasons the TPP is so bad is it destroys the entire socio-economic system of places it goes to. It bring in factories, switching the economic system to the factories then leaves when the people pass laws for fair wages or working conditions, and by the peoples economic system that was in place for hundreds of years is now destroyed. They no longer have goats and cheese and farms and bartering. They learn to work and can't subsist without official jobs. These people weren't poor to begin with,they had all they needed. They became poor when their socio-economic system changed and then fell through as factories left.

The world bank shouldn't be trusted to tell us who is poor or how the poor are doing. Until the world health org or the UN starts telling us, I'll take this with a grain of salt. The world bank offers micro loans to people who's economies were destroyed by the world banks biggest customers. How nice, they can try to create a local economy now that all is destroyed and get paid back in interest. It's the least they should do. And, I don't trust them for a second about the state of the poor.

[forest444]

8. Yes, and no.

That figure is on a purchasing power parity basis, which adjusts all raw dollar figures from each country (obtained by simply using the average exchange rate for the year of the given data) for estimated differences in costs.

In practical terms, doing so almost doubles dollar figures from most third world countries (where most of the extremely poor live). This means that for most of these countries, the $700-a-year poverty threshold actually refers to family incomes, per person, under $350 or so.

Having said that, I think too much emphasis is placed on income itself - when lack of access to basic services is as great a problem or greater than deficient incomes.

Measured in those parameters, the percentage of poor in this world is probably still 60% or more.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/22/_60_percent_of_the_world_population_still_without_toilets.html

[Demeter]

9. Income is a poor means of measuring poverty

Even when adjusted for this and that.

Poverty should be defined by food, clothing, shelter, health facilities, education, public utilities: availability, affordability and quality.

[salib]

10. Excellent point Demeter.

Just think, if we could simply make all of those things always available and of quality (quite do-able world wide) then poverty would have no meaning.

Imagine.

[Demeter]

11. But Salib, that's (shudder) Socialism! Planned Economy! Government Welfare!

Capitalism gives the opportunity to become Obscenely Wealthy, to the most sociopathic among us.

Socialism gives us all a fighting chance to live without deprivations that kill.