On Tuesday, March 16, 2004, at 01:04 AM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>>
>
> These kinds of comparisons are misleading because of the
> more intense commodification of goods and services in industrialized
> societies. You need to buy stuff to survive in "advanced"
> industrial societies like the U. S.; that isn't true for a
> surprisingly large proportion of the world population
> (subsistence farming, herding, mutual aid, bartering are still
> common outside urban centers in many poor nations). This
> makes the $1/day statistic misleading, because many people
> in the world are not really capitalist "consumers" (yet).
>
i have no doubt they are somewhat misleading, but michael yates argues they are misleading in the other direction:
<snip>
"The World Bank also uses a number comparable to the U.S. poverty level of income. Remember that the U.S. level for 2002 translates into $12.60 per person per day. The Bank’s level for poor countries is now a little more than $1 per day. Using this number, it claims that poverty diminished worldwide over the 1990s. However, this claim is suspect. It is true that $1 per day might go further in a poor country because prices are cheaper, so that while $1 per day in the United States makes a person obviously destitute, such may not be the case in a very poor country. If over time, prices fall in a poor country, then, other things equal, the number of persons living in poverty will fall. The problem, however, is that when the World Bank speaks of prices in a poor country, it means an index of all prices and not the prices of the things very poor people buy. In general, the prices which are relatively lowest and which have declined most in poor countries are those of services unlikely to be consumed by the poor. As journalist George Monbiot tells us, “[The World Bank’s] estimate of the purchasing power of the poor is based on the measure of their ability to buy any of the goods and services an economy has to offer: not only food, water and shelter but also airline tickets, pedicures and personal fitness training. The problem is that while basic goods are often more expensive in poor nations than they are in rich ones, services tend to be much cheaper [reflecting the tremendous pool of surplus labor in poor nations]...” He goes on to say, “But the extremely poor, of course, do not purchase the services of cleaners, driver or hairdressers.” Two researchers at Columbia University estimated that if corrections were made for the problems in the World Bank’s methodology, the number of persons living in absolute poverty would rise by 30 to 40 percent, completely eliminating the alleged decrease in poverty.
</snip>
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0204yates.htm
i see your point, miles. i'm looking for something, though, that provides a reasonable general measure of poverty on a global level and that is reasonably easily communicated to, say, students. this seems to be pretty much it, but i'm happy to take alternative suggestions.
j