Exposing the great 'poverty reduction' lie

Exposing the great 'poverty reduction' lie

The received wisdom comes to us from all directions: Poverty rates are declining and extreme poverty will soon be eradicated. The World Bank, the governments of wealthy countries, and - most importantly - the United Nations Millennium Campaign all agree on this narrative. Relax, they tell us. The world is getting better, thanks to the spread of free market capitalism and western aid. Development is working, and soon, one day in the very near future, poverty will be no more.

It is a comforting story, but unfortunately it is just not true. Poverty is not disappearing as quickly as they say. In fact, according to some measures, poverty has been getting significantly worse. If we are to be serious about eradicating poverty, we need to cut through the sugarcoating and face up to some hard facts.

False accounting

The most powerful expression of the poverty reduction narrative comes from the UN's Millennium Campaign. Building on the Millennium Declaration of 2000, the Campaign's main goal has been to reduce global poverty by half by 2015 - an objective that it proudly claims to have achieved ahead of schedule. But if we look beyond the celebratory rhetoric, it becomes clear that this assertion is deeply misleading.

The world's governments first pledged to end extreme poverty during the World Food Summit in Rome in 1996. They committed to reducing the number of undernourished people by half before 2015, which, given the population at the time, meant slashing the poverty headcount by 836 million. Many critics claimed that this goal was inadequate given that, with the right redistributive policies, extreme poverty could be ended much more quickly.

But instead of making the goals more robust, global leaders surreptitiously diluted it. Yale professor and development watchdog Thomas Pogge points out that when the Millennium Declaration was signed, the goal was rewritten as "Millennium Developmental Goal 1" (MDG-1) and was altered to halve the proportion (as opposed to the absolute number) of the world's people living on less than a dollar a day. By shifting the focus to income levels and switching from absolute numbers to proportional ones, the target became much easier to achieve. Given the rate of population growth, the new goal was effectively reduced by 167 million. And that was just the beginning.

After the UN General Assembly adopted MDG-1, the goal was diluted two more times. First, they changed it from halving the proportion of impoverished people in the world to halving the proportion of impoverished people in developing countries, thus taking advantage of an even faster-growing demographic denominator. Second, they moved the baseline of analysis from 2000 back to 1990, thus retroactively including all poverty reduction accomplished by China throughout the 1990s, due in no part whatsoever to the Millennium Campaign.

This statistical sleight-of-hand narrowed the target by a further 324 million. So what started as a goal to reduce the poverty headcount by 836 million has magically become only 345 million - less than half the original number. Having dramatically redefined the goal, the Millennium Campaign can claim that poverty has been halved when in fact it has not. The triumphalist narrative hailing the death of poverty rests on an illusion of deceitful accounting.

Other urls found in this thread:

aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/exposing-great-poverty-reductio-201481211590729809.html
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/bill-gates-and-4bn-in-poverty/
globalresearch.ca/the-davos-blind-eye-how-the-rich-eat-the-poor-and-the-world/5503273)
washingtonsblog.com/2015/08/crimes-against-humanity-01-poverty-murder-over-400-million-people-since-1995-more-than-all-wars-in-recorded-history.html)
gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/slavery-and-anti-slavery/resources/facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery
theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jul/17/the-hunger-numbers-are-we-counting-right
nber.org/papers/w12546
oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en_0.pdf
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

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Poor numbers

But there's more. Not only have the goalposts been moved, the definition of poverty itself has been massaged in a way that serves the poverty reduction narrative. What is considered the threshold for poverty - the "poverty line" - is normally calculated by each nation for itself, and is supposed to reflect what an average human adult needs to subsist. In 1990, Martin Ravallion, an Australian economist at the World Bank, noticed that the poverty lines of a group of the world's poorest countries clustered around $1 per day. On Ravallion's recommendation, the World Bank adopted this as the first-ever International Poverty Line (IPL).

But the IPL proved to be somewhat troublesome. Using this threshold, the World Bank announced in its 2000 annual report that "the absolute number of those living on $1 per day or less continues to increase. The worldwide total rose from 1.2 billion in 1987 to 1.5 billion today and, if recent trends persist, will reach 1.9 billion by 2015." This was alarming news, especially because it suggested that the free-market reforms imposed by the World Bank and the IMF on Global South countries during the 1980s and 1990s in the name of "development" were actually making things worse.

This amounted to a PR nightmare for the World Bank. Not long after the report was released, however, their story changed dramatically and they announced the exact opposite news: While poverty had been increasing steadily for some two centuries, they said, the introduction of free-market policies had actually reduced the number of impoverished people by 400 million between 1981 and 2001.

This new story was possible because the Bank shifted the IPL from the original $1.02 (at 1985 PPP) to $1.08 (at 1993 PPP), which, given inflation, was lower in real terms. With this tiny change - a flick of an economist's wrist - the world was magically getting better, and the Bank's PR problem was instantly averted. This new IPL is the one that the Millennium Campaign chose to adopt.
The IPL was changed a second time in 2008, to $1.25 (at 2005 PPP). And once again the story improved overnight. The $1.08 IPL made it seem as though the poverty headcount had been reduced by 316 million people between 1990 and 2005. But the new IPL - even lower than the last, in real terms - inflated the number to 437 million, creating the illusion that an additional 121 million souls had been "saved" from the jaws of debilitating poverty. Not surprisingly, the Millennium Campaign adopted the new IPL, which allowed it to claim yet further chimerical gains.

aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/exposing-great-poverty-reductio-201481211590729809.html

According to Peter Edwards of Newcastle University, if people are to achieve normal life expectancy, they need roughly double the current IPL, or a minimum of $2.50 per day. But adopting this higher standard would seriously undermine the poverty reduction narrative. An IPL of $2.50 shows a poverty headcount of around 3.1 billion, almost triple what the World Bank and the Millennium Campaign would have us believe. It also shows that poverty is getting worse, not better, with nearly 353 million more people impoverished today than in 1981. With China taken out of the equation, that number shoots up to 852 million.
Some economists go further and advocate for an IPL of $5 or even $10 - the upper boundary suggested by the World Bank. At this standard, we see that some 5.1 billion people - nearly 80 percent of the world's population - are living in poverty today. And the number is rising.

These more accurate parameters suggest that the story of global poverty is much worse than the spin doctored versions we are accustomed to hearing. The $1.25 threshold is absurdly low, but it remains in favour because it is the only baseline that shows any progress in the fight against poverty, and therefore justifies the present economic order. Every other line tells the opposite story. In fact, even the $1.25 line shows that, without factoring China, the poverty headcount is worsening, with 108 million people added to the ranks of the poor since 1981. All of this calls the triumphalist narrative into question.

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Very nice. Do you have any more?

bump

Someone screenshot this shit and make an infograph

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Here are the real facts cap-cuck:

thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/bill-gates-and-4bn-in-poverty/

1. The 1 dollar level is used to indicate EXTREME poverty. Read the title of the graphs.
2. It is still a fact that extreme poverty as a share of the world population is going down massively.
3. It is obvious that if you use any other measure of poverty based on a higher dollar cap, the number of poor people increases
4. The fact these numbers come mainly from Asia and SA does not make them any less relevant. And, yes, Africa remains a disaster.

So, nothing you said disproves my point.

The point is that those below 2.5 a day are still extremely poor. The decrease of people with below 1 a day is only proof that equality is increasing within the poorest. Overall suffering is increasing.

What fucking does then?

If your going to insist on poverty being measured in dollars and not overall human well-being then you have to accept a higher number based on what it actually takes to meet the basic needs of a human being.

You fags insisted on putting the definition in monetary terms in the first place.

Here's an example of how it works:

A bit l8r
>but this isn't true extreme poverty

Asians are the only third worlders intelligent enough to not live like gutter rats unlike the other subhumans, woop dee fucking doo.

I hope satanist capitalists abduct your future children and sacrifice them to Lucifer and Moloch.

Where does this come from?


Read your first post>>1607133
You clearly implied that not all people living under extreme poverty starved to death, only that the risk, in Niger for instance, was 3 times higher, which is reasonable enough when you compare people who are extremely poor versus those who are just poor.

People want to use some measure of poverty. There are several - this is just one.

It's amazing how you write so much and yet say so little.

Are you that stupid? Is that really why you think the chineese standard of living is improving? And before you post some graphs or whatever, I can accept almost any assertion about blacks that is made with just slightly scientific background, and you eould still be airheaded for somehow thinking race is the dominant factor in deciding where standards lf living improve. "Race realists" are edgy and all, but race essentialists are actually the scum of the earth.

t. knows asia from animus and postcards

Are you implying that the reason China is basically the only country that is developing and that the reason that the only countries to go from grinding poverty to first world living standards are asian (Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc.) isn't because the people in those countries are smart and resourceful?

>Davos Oxfam reports that the bottom half of the world population have lost 40% of their wealth (globalresearch.ca/the-davos-blind-eye-how-the-rich-eat-the-poor-and-the-world/5503273) over the past five years
>at least 400 million people have died from poverty and poverty-related disease since 1995 (washingtonsblog.com/2015/08/crimes-against-humanity-01-poverty-murder-over-400-million-people-since-1995-more-than-all-wars-in-recorded-history.html)

I can't help myself here:
>country that has done the most to fight poverty if you believe Chinese gov figures is the largest third world nation that explicitly rejects Western neoliberal advice

It's amazing how you can read and nitpick so much and comprehend so little.

true, but these people have an absolutely ridiculous birth rate, which really goes against the notion that they are THAT poor as they have at least surpassed the Malthusian barrier.
It's because of this that you should use poverty as a share of the world population.

What do you mean by relative here? As a share of world population or just inequality?

that's inequality, not poverty

nobody is saying there is no poverty

China does not follow the Washington Consensus, true, but they are still very much capitalist. They are in a way similar to what the peripheral European economies were between 45 and the 80s.

It's because of this that you should use poverty as a share of the world population.
The typical slave woman in Antebellum America would typically have between 6-14 children, and this was encouraged by the slave masters to increase their profit margin. Contrary to popular myth hunger was also endemic on American slave plantations, and no historian doubts that American slaves were extremely poor. They also broke the malthusian barrier and were the only population of slaves in the Americas that had positive demographics, in the absolute sense they had enough food for their bodies to conceive and deliver children but what was the result:

gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/slavery-and-anti-slavery/resources/facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery

So it would seem very similar to very poor developing countries where high childhood mortality and/or the need for labor to help with the family farm or to take care of elderly family members in old age encourages high childhood fertility.

So, it would seem according to you that American slaves were not all that poor since they could sire children and even pass the malthusian barrier. 19th century European laborers were also very poor by modern standards but the working class as a whole not all of its sections btw on average was in demographic surplus during the 19th century.

Believe it or not there are almost definitely people worse off then American slaves today

According to capitalist economists if you're not living on a level worse then American slaves or aren't literally starving to death then your not truly "poor" because you don't qualify as "extremely" poor. Your poverty is just relative and in that sense your unmet biological and human needs aren't much different from a CEO who feels poor in comparison with his colleagues or the shareholders. The more realistic poverty measures are typically dismissed as "relative poverty" levels by bourgeois economists.

I've said before, hunger is pretty objective standard of poverty, if you can't afford to meet your daily calorie and nutritional needs then your likely poor by any reasonable human standard. There are obviously many, many other factors but let's just focus on this one:


theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jul/17/the-hunger-numbers-are-we-counting-right

Wrong, they also reported on the wealth of the bottom half of the population and found it had decreased. Its true inequality is going up, and its true that capitalism can cause gains among the very poor in certain times and societies while the wealth of the rich also increases, but it does not follow that increased capacity to create wealth means that the wealth of the poor rises and that its never a zero-sum game.

From OP's article:
This amounted to a PR nightmare for the World Bank. Not long after the report was released, however, their story changed dramatically and they announced the exact opposite news: While poverty had been increasing steadily for some two centuries, they said, the introduction of free-market policies had actually reduced the number of impoverished people by 400 million between 1981 and 2001.

So here's a question I have for you, was poverty constantly increasing in the 200 years prior to the implementation of neoliberal policies or does capitalism consistently decrease poverty? Both stories can't be true simultaneously, so think about what you believe there.

You're very much right that its a very capitalist country. China is also an imperialist power now and actually exploits the rest of the underdeveloped world just like the West. I'd question if there figures on poverty are reliable but there's no doubt they've created a huge petit-bourgeoisie and increased nominal income at the very, very least.

Is it that hard to accept that there are several degrees of poverty?

The world population has lived thousands of years not achieving a long-run population growth much greater than 0. That's being stuck in the Malthusian trap and that's being truly poor. Birth rates are ridiculously high but so are infant mortality rates. If you suddenly become a little bit less poor (but still poor), infant mortality rates start decreasing and population starts booming. That's what happened in Europe in the 18th/19th century and what happened to the slaves you mentioned. Also, that's what's happening to most of Africa today, and that's definitely what happened in Asia during the 2nd half of the last century.

I don't regard relative poverty as an end, then, just as a means of social stability.

Have any data for its evolution?

Where is that? I am skimming the article and cannot find it.

You can't simply impose an economic model on a group of people. There needs to be a huge set of institutions in place beforehand which often ignored.

Here comes the meme of exploitation. That creates personal fortunes, not economic powerhouses.
There is actually an influential study in development economics claiming colonialism benefited economically the subject nations, ceteris paribus:
nber.org/papers/w12546

Human beings aren't just mindless breeding machines as much as the Right or the anti-Natalists may want you to think that. People in traditional societies were actually able to figure that too many kids meant there were wouldn't be enough food and they typically chose food over extra kids. Higher childhood mortality due to the lower level of medicine available in a society also influenced the relatively stable population levels.

Most traditional societies practiced various methods of population/birth control, infanticide in most Asian societies, later marriage in Europe, various forms of herbal abortions and impromptu birth control in Africa and elsewhere. Capitalism created consistent exponential economic growth which allowed for consistent population growth but it wasn't like everyone was starving constantly in all places and all times prior to capitalism. There's even less of an excuse for hunger and other forms of poverty then there was previously in history because we are consistently growing the stock of the wealth of global society. Poverty under capitalism is largely artificially-created.

oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en_0.pdf

Those people are idiots. They only analyzed "islands" while claiming that the island model can be extrapolated to the entire country? Its like saying that Wall Street is rich, therefore, the Rust belt should emulate Wall Street.

There was a trade-off. On one hand you, want a lot of kids because mortality is high; on the other hand, it means there is going to be a mouth to feed in the short-term. In developing societies, though, people definitely have a lot of kids, whether they die or not.

lol

I looked at it and I am astonished to how low the quality of this Oxfam report is. Nonetheless, on the particular point on wealth decreasing, it can be simply be due to higher birth rates among the poor, which is indeed the case. Look at Fig. 1. There are 6 people initially, the wealth grows exponentially if you order them according to wealth. If only two poorest have kids, then the wealth classes "bottom 50%" and "top 50%" themselves will change and the top 50% will appear to be getting richer while the bottom 50% to be getting poorer. No change in wealth has occurred though. To ignore this is intellectually dishonest.

Nonetheless, it is good that you brought it up.

I knew you would say that. That is written in the paper and it is an issue of external validity.
However, it is that way they can indeed conclude that colonialism had a direct positive link with current GDP, as working with islands means you are working with a natural experiment. For proper countries, there is no known way of doing the same. So, the only available evidence to this day is that you can't say anything about the effect of colonialism in subject nations except for islands, where the effect was positive. Would this be a thing you would say to your friends? haha

forgot the 4 in the pic

Have this one, if you prefer. The conclusion is the same.