[lbo-talk] question on poverty and world bank's PPP

[Jeffrey Fisher]

i actually have hard copy of the UN's 2001 global report on human 
settlements, which i've been flipping through to see how they flesh out 
the concept of absolute poverty, and how they might bring together data 
on access to resources (water, education, etc.) and income.

first, i'm seeing the same arg's i've seen on this list about the 
inadequacy of income-based measures, but they also argue that the 
income-based lines are misleading from yet another angle, "in that they 
imply that the income needed to avoid poverty is not only the same in 
all locations within countries but also the same across countries. this 
leads to an underestimation of the scale of 'income-poverty' since the 
income level needed to avoid poverty is much higher than US$1 a day in 
most large and/or prosperous cities."

on the food/calorie question, they note:

"Income-based poverty lines are generally based on estimates of the 
cost of an 'adequate' diet with some minor additional amount added for 
non-food expenditures." while this may underestimate (per chris's 
point) other ways of getting food, it is also quite likely to 
underestimate what amounts to an "adequate" diet. and in cities, you 
don't go hunting so much (except for rats, in chicago). then there are 
non-food expenditures . . .

interestingly, the strongest point i'm seeing is that lots of non-food 
things like education, water, sanitation, etc., add up to significant 
portions of income -- particularly in cities, which is the focus of 
this report, and even where such things are public provision. for 
example:

"in many cities, renting a room takes 20-30% of the poor households' 
income, even though the quality of the accommodation may be inadequate. 
[ . . . ] Many households have such inadequate access to water and 
sanitation that paying vendors  and paying for 'as-you-go' toilets 
takes up 5-20% of income."

fyi. all very interesting.

j

On Tuesday, March 16, 2004, at 10:17 PM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:


> we've talked about this stuff in terms of subsistence, etc. and i have 
> been pulling in data on access to resources from the UN. :-) but what 
> talks like money?
>
> thanks,
>
> j
>
> On Tuesday, March 16, 2004, at 12:07 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> You can get this across to students
>> by talking about limited access to clean water, health
>> care, education, food, shelter (UN has good but depressing
>> data on these).
>
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