
The Meaninglessness of Ending Extreme Poverty - indoindo
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-01/the-meaninglessness-of-ending-extreme-poverty-
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minerva_ivanova
The World Bank defines the state of extreme poverty as being:

Short of food for all or part of the year, often eating only one meal per day.

Unable to save money - for if a family member falls ill and money is needed to
see a doctor, or if the crop fails and there is nothing to eat.

Unable to afford to send your children to school.

Living in an unstable house made with mud or thatch that requires regular
rebuilding.

Having no close source of safe drinking water.

If relieving the estimated 1.2 billion people in extreme poverty from living
this way is meaningless then I despair.

~~~
dsjoerg
Your claim of the World's Bank definition of poverty is not what the article
states. Can you provide a link?

~~~
mikeash
This list is actually how people in poverty define poverty, according to a
World Bank research project:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/books/chapters/chapter-
lif...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/books/chapters/chapter-life-you-
could-save.html)

The World Bank's own definition of "extreme poverty" is much simpler:
$1.25/day or less, as can be seen all over their site:
[http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/measuringpoverty](http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/measuringpoverty)

~~~
minerva_ivanova
It's important to note that the $1.25 denotes the relative purchasing power of
their income and not something that would translate into some higher value in
the country of the impoverished person.

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Dylan16807
>There's no scenario that sees the world ending poverty if the poverty line is
set relative to the average incomes of the world’s poorest countries.

 _No_ scenario? How about one where income inequality lowers in those
countries? It's entirely possible to have all incomes be at least a certain
percent of mean or median income.

~~~
furyg3
This is what I came here to say. Poverty is a resource allocation problem that
is judged relatively. As living standards increase, the subjective 'poverty'
perception also moves. The inverse is also true: when living standards
decrease (say due to a war or disaster) the conception of poverty will also
adjust. Additionally, a country cannot be expected to solve it's 'poverty'
problem in the entire country is pretty equally in poverty. The resources
simply do not exist to be allocated.

So the proper way to judge subjective poverty is by income equality (a ratio
of the richest X% to the poorest X%) within a country. If inequality is very
high and there is still subjective poverty in the country, that country's
government is not taking poverty seriously... do not believe them, they have
the resources! Any external help that is not advisory is essentially
subsidizing the rich of that country; instead if we want to support those in
poverty we should sanction that government until they act appropriately.

If inequality is very low in the country and subjective poverty exists, you
can make an excellent case for external aid. Countries in this situation may
be victims of war (Afghanistan), failed states, or so small/remote that they
may not have the resources to take care of themselves.

This is a difficult mirror to hold up, however, as there are many developed
countries that have high inequality scores.

~~~
jpmoral
> If inequality is very high and there is still subjective poverty in the
> country, that country's government is not taking poverty seriously... do not
> believe them, they have the resources! Any external help that is not
> advisory is essentially subsidizing the rich of that country; instead if we
> want to support those in poverty we should sanction that government until
> they act appropriately.

Interesting point. What would you recommend to a relatively well-off citizen
of such a country, would donating personal time, money, and labor to alleviate
poverty then constitute a subsidy of the rich/political class?

~~~
furyg3
Note that my argument is based on an international perspective.

Within a country a voluntary wealth transfer is a great way to solve poverty
IMHO. If one person can solve the whole county's subjective poverty problem,
wonderful! The inequality in such a society may still be large, which is a
shame, but if the country is democratic and 'functioning' (one criteria of
mine is no poverty) then that sounds great. That person is sparing the rest of
society from dealing with the issue, so in some way yes it's a subsidy to
them.

I don't see this happening, though. In my opinion a rich person who cannot
solve the problem unilaterally should be lobbying his government and society
to solve the problem at that level. Maybe that's more efficient
administration, reallocation of budget, or higher taxes, or a new means of
distribution. Probably some combination.

~~~
jpmoral
The reason I ask is because I am a citizen of just such a country (high income
inequality and high incidence of poverty). I'm not wealthy, but I'm better off
than the vast majority and feel I can and should help somehow.

It's always interesting to hear other perspectives.

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alenox
So by defining poverty on a relative sliding scale, we'll constantly be
working to improve the conditions of the least fortunate of us...

Good.

~~~
lmm
And will have no idea how much our efforts are actually achieving (or even
whether we're being harmful). Not so good.

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BurningFrog
Absolute poverty is about actual living standards. How much food, housing,
healthcare etc I have.

Subjective poverty is about social status. Where am I in a ranked list of
wealth and resources?

Absolute poverty can change a lot, and that reflects real change in quality of
life.

Subjective poverty is a zero sum game. Half the people will always be in the
bottom half, because math.

~~~
bcgraham
I don't think your statements about subjective poverty are true. Subjective
poverty is only a zero-sum game within a single social "game." If there are
more games, there are more winners. Lots of little ponds means you are more
likely to find the few where you can be the big fish.

It's true that these ponds can be loosely ordered and some of them are
inarguably ranked higher than others (e.g., being a top-tier actor has more
social status than being a top-tier chess player). But for the vast majority
of people, we just don't care that we're at the bottom of the vast majority of
these games.

For example, I'm pretty low on the totem pole in my local gym, but I'm pretty
high on the totem pole at work (small company, long-ish tenure). Paul Graham
is pretty high on the totem pole in Silicon Valley, but he's probably pretty
low on the totem pole at a film festival.

Except for a few of these "big" games (film industry, politics, the extremely
wealthy), most of us get to be pretty good at entirely avoiding situations
where we are subjectively poor. For those we can't avoid, we're able "give
more weight" to where we're more important, through our own, personal
valuations. Hence my "sum" across the games I care about is greater than zero,
which is true for most people.

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ph0rque
What would a robust definition of poverty be? I think you'd have to get away
from the concept of money, and define it as a lack of, or a lack of a way to
get, any of the following:

* shelter

* transportation

* food

* medical care

* education

~~~
lmm
Even that is very relative. What quality of housing? Of food? There are
lifesaving medical procedures that even the richest struggle to afford, if the
condition is rare enough (IIRC someone on HN posted about paying for genetic
testing for him and his wife, $8k each, to figure out what their son's
condition was - is that something you're "poor" if you can't afford?). It's
even clearer with education - is basic schooling enough? Are you "poor" if you
can't afford to do a PhD?

~~~
ph0rque
Agreed. But perhaps we can come up with a general framework for identifying
extreme poverty (that's on par with the $1.25/day threshold currently being
used).

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NoMoreNicksLeft
The only useful way to look at poverty is to use an absolute scale.

If we assume that every human being is born with absolutely zero wealth (or,
at least, that this used to be the case in the distant past), then we should
go about determining some objective minimum standard that is acceptable.

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erikb
And also there are some that live on less money and are quite happy with that.
What do we want to do about them? Push some money onto them?

~~~
falcolas
When the poverty line is established as the line whether they can buy a basket
of food, making sure everyone can purchase that basket of food is tough to
call a "bad thing".

We're advanced enough on a global scale that people perishing because they
could not bring down a deer to feed them through the winter should not even be
a thing. Hell, some countries let imported food rot in the warehouse due to
politics, yet there exist people who starve because they can not afford food?

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/05/france-
superm...](http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/05/france-supermarket-
food-waste-ban)

"On Thursday, France's parliament unanimously approved a new law prohibiting
large supermarkets from throwing out unsold food, instead mandating stores
donate any surplus groceries to charities or for animal feed use.

The law, which aims to reduce waste in a country where people trash up to 30
kilos of food per person annually, is part of a more general energy and
environmental bill."

Those who helped campaign for this are working globally next.

