People living in extreme poverty 1820-2025

[mike]

I'm not quite as optimistic as the quote below, but I think it's good to take a look at poverty in this large perspective sometimes.

This may be the most remarkable story in human history. For almost all of human existence, survival was a daily struggle. For thousands of years, there was no significant change in the human standard of living. For almost everyone, life was, in the words of philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Then came the Great Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The quality of life began to improve. A middle class emerged. Humans began to enjoy freedoms they had never known before.

As humanity became more prosperous, the rate of improvement accelerated. In 1820 about 90% of the world lived in “extreme poverty,” defined as living on less than $2/day (controlled for inflation). In 1966, the percentage of the world’s population living in extreme poverty had fallen to 50%. In 1990, that number had fallen to 36%. Now it is about 9% and it seems that the day is fast approaching when extreme poverty, once the norm, will be entirely eliminated.

Perhaps the only thing our ancestors would find more amazing than our quality of life, is our seeming ingratitude for it.

The image is from humanprogress.org

[Neto]

How is the daily average of $2.00 per day calculated? How does their analysis include the amount of food and other commodities acquired through direct work (such as cutting and processing timber for one's own buildings, hunting & gathering for food stuffs, and growing crops and meat sources 'from off of the land')?

[Wesleyb]

How is the daily average of $2.00 per day calculated? How does their analysis include the amount of food and other commodities acquired through direct work (such as cutting and processing timber for one's own buildings, hunting & gathering for food stuffs, and growing crops and meat sources 'from off of the land')?

Yes, and exchanges of labor and food within extended families and communities. It has always seemed to me that income is a pretty poor measure of actual poverty. There's a big difference between someone making $2 a day in New York City and someone making the equivalent in the Brazilian rainforest, right?

[JohnH]

How is the daily average of $2.00 per day calculated? How does their analysis include the amount of food and other commodities acquired through direct work (such as cutting and processing timber for one's own buildings, hunting & gathering for food stuffs, and growing crops and meat sources 'from off of the land')?

Yes, and exchanges of labor and food within extended families and communities. It has always seemed to me that income is a pretty poor measure of actual poverty. There's a big difference between someone making $2 a day in New York City and someone making the equivalent in the Brazilian rainforest, right?

If we replace every mother taking care of her children at home, keeping a robust kitchen garden, etc. with putting kids in a day care, buying fast food instead, a long commute, and a job, then "income per day" and GDP goes way up, even though the actual quality of life becomes far worse.

The same is true of taking fathers away from home, tending their own productive fields and barns and having their children working alongside dad. None of that shows up in GDP either.

[barnhart]

How is the daily average of $2.00 per day calculated? How does their analysis include the amount of food and other commodities acquired through direct work (such as cutting and processing timber for one's own buildings, hunting & gathering for food stuffs, and growing crops and meat sources 'from off of the land')?

I don't know the answer to your question but I think tracking this sort of data is not for the purpose of comparing one type of poverty with another. If the data were on the opposite end of the income scale, for example the number of people with income more than $50 million/year, we would understand the point to be a window in a large cohort, not comparing between them such as determining whether a billionaire in China is richer than one in Australia.

I think the article in the opening post is correct directionally without being able to speak to the accuracy of the graph. Desperation poverty has been dramatically reduced in my lifetime. It's an amazing time to be alive.

[JohnH]

I think the article in the opening post is correct directionally without being able to speak to the accuracy of the graph. Desperation poverty has been dramatically reduced in my lifetime. It's an amazing time to be alive.

Is it? I see far more homelessness - plus the "invisible" kind of people who work but have to live in their cars - than I did when I was growing up. Many people have been priced out and forgotten.

[Neto]

My first encounter of working with people who were living out of their car, or in a tent at a camp ground was during the late 70's, in Tulsa. The manufacturing market in places like Detroit had crumbled, and these people stayed there, trying to find work until they lost their homes, and had only enough money to pick up what was left and move south. They scrambled until they were able to move into a rented space.

[JohnH]

My first encounter of working with people who were living out of their car, or in a tent at a camp ground was during the late 70's, in Tulsa. The manufacturing market in places like Detroit had crumbled, and these people stayed there, trying to find work until they lost their homes, and had only enough money to pick up what was left and move south. They scrambled until they were able to move into a rented space.

The difference now is they’ll never be able to afford a rented space.

[ohio jones]

My first encounter of working with people who were living out of their car, or in a tent at a camp ground was during the late 70's, in Tulsa. The manufacturing market in places like Detroit had crumbled, and these people stayed there, trying to find work until they lost their homes, and had only enough money to pick up what was left and move south. They scrambled until they were able to move into a rented space.

The difference now is they’ll never be able to afford a rented space.

Unless they monetize their life by documenting it on Youtube. Then they might be able to afford a rental house, but ...

[Neto]

My first encounter of working with people who were living out of their car, or in a tent at a camp ground was during the late 70's, in Tulsa. The manufacturing market in places like Detroit had crumbled, and these people stayed there, trying to find work until they lost their homes, and had only enough money to pick up what was left and move south. They scrambled until they were able to move into a rented space.

The difference now is they’ll never be able to afford a rented space.

That's a good question, one for which I do not have an answer, or even a guess. The Oklahoma state law is now only 30 days before required to register an out-of-state vehicle. [AI claims it was already that way in 1979, but I expected that it was 6 months back then. I lived in Texas for over 6 months, and they took me to court because I hadn't registered my car there, but my Dad had purchased that car in his own name, so after I showed them the registration information, they couldn't do anything about it. (Dad wanted that car after I left the country for mission work, which didn't happen as soon as planned, and we just left in his name, even after I had repaid him. Then I moved here to Ohio, and lived here for around 16 months before I sold it, also without registering it here.]

But there were guys from all over the upper US who worked there in the plating shop during that period of time, and most never registered their vehicles in Oklahoma. Naturally it would be much harder for a man with a wife & children to 'get on his feet', but most of these guys were young singles (unless they had family they had left behind). (We found out later that one of these guys was wanted in two states, his home state of New York, and Iowa - for bank robbery. Then we understood why he spent money to repaint his car....)