[HN Gopher] A new poverty line shifted the World Bank's poverty ...
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A new poverty line shifted the World Bank's poverty data
Author : alphabetatango
Score : 64 points
Date : 2025-08-11 07:03 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ourworldindata.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ourworldindata.org)
| cbeach wrote:
| The poverty rate should be based on an absolute amount, adjusted
| for inflation in the staples, like food and shelter.
|
| Any other kind of adjustment (like, for example, this latest
| intervention by the World Bank) is political in nature.
|
| We should disregard any statistical data whose collection is
| politically biased.
| isbwkisbakadqv wrote:
| How do you think developing counties come up with their poverty
| lines? This new international number is just the median of
| those...
| automatic6131 wrote:
| Usually they choose a deliberately stupid measurement such as
| "household income below a percentage of the median wage".
|
| This is stupid for many reasons, including (but not limited
| to): non-monetary, in-kind benefits being excluded, perverse
| outcomes such as a decline in median wages "reducing poverty"
| and just about guaranteed continuation of this "poverty". So
| left wing politicians LOVE it. It's an everlasting cudgel
| that can never be fixed.
| kingkawn wrote:
| all your examples would not add up to someone who meets the
| standards for poverty not in real world terms being too
| poor to live well
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| It's fairly easy to fix, as long as you are willing to do
| what it takes to address income inequality. Reduce the Gini
| coefficient and poverty decreases.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| That's actually my point: if you take (e.g.) 65% of
| median income, in a world with a Gini coefficient of 1 -
| perfect inequality - the rate of poverty is 0%.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| But that's an edge case that will never occur in reality.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > non-monetary, in-kind benefits being excluded
|
| This seems sane. The real question one should ask is, how
| many people can earn a living that allows them to meet
| basic needs, without state support?
|
| You can have a separate figure that out of the number of
| poor people (like defined in the last sentence), how many
| are no longer poor with state support?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| There should be a universal human standard to define what
| extreme poverty is--i.e. the amount needed to secure food,
| shelter, and clothing--and then that amount should be
| assessed country-by-country (or region-by-region) by an
| independent body. The number of $3 per day is well above the
| "basic needs" threshold in some of the poorest countries, and
| well below it in the US, for example.
| duskwuff wrote:
| This is addressed in the article - see the section titled
| "Estimating comparable national distributions". (In short:
| income is being scaled relative to purchasing power
| parity.)
| Hilift wrote:
| Never happen. Defining and measuring poverty is a sensitive
| topic with juked stats in every country. The UK for example,
| has a poverty rate of 46% for families with three or more
| children. The poverty rate for Pakistani households is 47%.
| Around 7% of the UK is considered destitute. This data is
| rarely discussed because it is too unpleasant, and no-one wants
| to connect the inability to fund the national budget with the
| lack of money. The US does the same with occasional outlandish
| claims of "lifting nn% people out of poverty" by spending on
| programs that usually don't last.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| "The poverty line has increased in real terms. And with it, so
| have the World Bank's estimates of extreme poverty. 125 million
| people who would not have been counted as extremely poor before
| June are now included."
|
| I think this is a good change, but maybe would be better to leave
| the old standard alone in real terms and then make a new
| category? "the poor will always be with you"
|
| "the poor will always be with you"
| btilly wrote:
| And yet, to an amazing extent, they aren't.
|
| If you look back in 200 years, poor people starving to death
| was simply an accepted fact of life. Today, poor people get
| fat. Do their lives suck? Absolutely! Just look at the
| craziness around housing. But in terms of resources per person
| available to the poor? Very few of us realize how good we've
| got it.
|
| The extreme poverty line has remained essentially the same
| (adjusted for inflation) for a few decades. Projecting
| backwards in time, most people in every country used to be in
| extreme poverty. We are on track to eliminating extreme poverty
| within our lifetimes. They've adjusted the poverty line
| upwards. But just watch, life keeps on improving.
| appointment wrote:
| Where are people living on $3/day getting fat?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwashiorkor (note:
| distressing images)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Important distinction:
|
| That is not "fat" in the same way that someone with
| cirrhosis isn't fat, that is _diseased_
|
| >The name, introduced by Williams in 1935, was derived
| from the Ga language of coastal Ghana, translated as "the
| sickness the baby gets when the new baby comes"
|
| Christ that's sad.
| jahnu wrote:
| People in extreme poverty are not getting fat
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/obesity-vs-gdp
| btilly wrote:
| No, people in extreme poverty are not getting fat.
|
| But _poor_ people do in great numbers in many countries.
| For example there are many obese Americans on food stamps.
|
| Thanks to social services, the number of Americans who are
| in extreme poverty is approximately zero. When I compare to
| history, I far prefer this state of affairs to what used to
| be the norm.
| dartharva wrote:
| > Thanks to social services, the number of Americans who
| are in extreme poverty is approximately zero.
|
| I wish I could make myself have such confidence in any
| government entity as much as you seem to have in US
| social services
| JoachimSchipper wrote:
| You're commenting on an article about people consuming
| less than $3/day; Americans on food stamps (SNAP appears
| to be about $4-6/day alone, not counting any other
| benefits) are a distraction, simply not part of the
| population that the article is discussing.
| cwmoore wrote:
| So $10/day for 8.2B people is only $30 trillion a year.
| Tax the bots for UBI. AGI could make that in a weekend.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> For example there are many obese Americans on food
| stamps._
|
| All of their own fault. I recently saw a youtube
| compilation of tiktok clips of Americans on food stamps
| making videos flaunting their overfull supermarket
| shopping carts and it was all name brand junk food made
| up of refined carbs, fats and sugars, and to no ones
| surprise, they were all obese. No vegetables, no fruits,
| no leafy greens, no legumes, but all junk food which
| costs more than the healthy stuff. Who's fault is that?
| At what point is personal accountability supposed to kick
| in?
|
| If you can afford a roof over your head, a car, and
| entire shopping carts full of name brand junk food(which
| is more expensive than healthy food) to make yourself
| obese, you are anything but poor, you are just stupid and
| glutenous.
|
| Edit: I see the downvotes, but notice nobody is saying
| that I am wrong? ;) So then we agree that I'm right.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| You're being deliberately incendiary and you're saying
| like the simplest thing. Why might they be buying trash
| food? Why didn't their parents teach them not to? Why is
| the shit food so addictive? Is it, perhaps, the cheapest
| way to get something tasty? Maybe there are underlying
| social problems, and that's more interesting to discuss
| than "poor people are stupid and gluttonous."
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> You're being deliberately incendiary_
|
| Which part was "incendiary"?
|
| _> you're saying like the simplest thing_
|
| The truth is often simple, people are just too scared to
| confront it. So they call it "incendiary".
|
| _> Is it, perhaps, the cheapest way to get something
| tasty?_
|
| Healthy food is also tasty and cheaper than highly
| processed junk food. But it's easier to blame
| externalities than take accountability.
|
| _> Maybe there are underlying social problems, and
| that's more interesting to discuss than "poor people are
| stupid and gluttonous."_
|
| Why aren't poor people in poorer countries fat despite
| suffering even bigger social issue like war, slavery,
| rapes and famine?
| lovich wrote:
| > name brand junk food(which is more expensive than
| healthy food)
|
| Do you think a banana is 10 dollars too? Grains and bread
| are cheaper. Rotisserie chickens sold as loss leaders are
| a cheap source of meat. But fruits and vegetables?
|
| Those are more expensive per calorie than junk food.
| Especially when you take into account spoilage
|
| > Edit: I see the downvotes, but notice nobody is saying
| that I am wrong? ;) So then we agree that I'm right.
|
| No we do not agree. You're incorrect and vindictive about
| it
| anxoo wrote:
| >Thanks to social services, the number of Americans who
| are in extreme poverty is approximately zero.
|
| or 4.19 million, if you wanted to spend 2 minutes and
| look up [the
| source](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/poverty-
| explorer?tab=li...) actually listed in the main article
| datax2 wrote:
| I am not a fan of their initial "Global Income Distribution"
| curve. if you take the actual data at the bottom of the article
| and plot it; it does not make anything the resembles a standard
| distribution as portrayed. It could be an infographic, it could
| be different axis, who knows, but portraying a standard
| distribution is wrong if you have an outlying skew in your
| distribution. Everything under $40 is a standard distribution,
| but above $40 represents the same volume of people as the average
| skewing any sort of plotting.
|
| For 2025 only
|
| Global People | Dollars
|
| 1,183,873,832 | above $40
|
| 389,144,677 | $30-$40
|
| 681,087,495 | $20-$30
|
| 1,647,364,177 | $10-$20
|
| 1,134,291,724 | $7-$10
|
| 1,170,170,455 | $5-$7
|
| 1,185,828,184 | $3-$5
|
| 700,440,541 | $1-$3
|
| 107,765,635 | <$1
| pc86 wrote:
| I wish these numbers were percentile relative to the local
| economy and not in made-up "international dollars."
|
| It means absolutely nothing that 1.1B people live on $3-5/day
| and a different 1.1B live on $5-7. Can you survive in the local
| economy on $2/day? Then $4/day is not that bad, and $7/day is
| doing pretty well.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That's a fair criticism but given how the economy has
| globalized, people also exploit that discrepancy by hiring
| remote workers abroad so it's not completely irrelevant
| vharuck wrote:
| I'm no international poverty economist, but I imagine lower
| income relative to neighboring countries would still have
| some effect. For instance, if a poor country suffers a famine
| in its staple crop, can that government and its citizens
| afford to import food?
| pessimizer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity
| nilstycho wrote:
| The x-axis isn't "income", it's "log income".
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| I find the plots of distribution of global income here very
| illuminating - https://www.gapminder.org/income-mountains-
| dataset-v2/
|
| Because the nicely shaped bell curves used in TFA are not at all
| what the distribution actually looks like. There is a significant
| right-skew. Don't miss the log-scale on x-axis in the first few
| graphs as well.
| nilstycho wrote:
| The distributions in TFA are accurate. Compare with the shape
| of the 2015 distribution here: https://ourworldindata.org/the-
| history-of-global-economic-in...
| mannyv wrote:
| When the benchmark changes, you should ask 'why.'
|
| According TFA the number of people in extreme poverty dropped
| when using the old IPL value, and went up with the new value.
|
| So politically, no NGO wants to say poverty decreased, because
| that might reduce urgency, and thus priority. So moving the
| goalposts means a 50% increase in poverty instead of a 20%
| decrease in poverty. Which one benefits your mission more?
|
| That's not to say the revision of the IPL was wrong. But it does
| further the mission. Did the improved statistical methods trigger
| the IPL revision? It's hard to tell without internal world bank
| docs. I'll bet it did.
| Guthur wrote:
| If you want something even more illuminating check the detailed
| annual report from the UN on the progress of the 2030 plan, the
| only measures that are consistently improving are those around
| governance and control not the well being of people.
| barbazoo wrote:
| What report are you referring to?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Re NGOs:
|
| A friend of mine once said
|
| "If the problem weren't so valuable, they would have solved it
| by now"
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Like how Uber solved transport? Or Amazon solved online
| shopping?
| ljsprague wrote:
| We're not talking about corporations; we're talking about
| government bureaucracies.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| That sounds good but makes little sense. Makes just as much
| sense as the people claiming there is a cure for cancer that
| works 100% with no side-effects but that "they" hide it
| because it is so profitable to treat sick people.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Or for a more HN-example. If IT-security wasnt so valueable
| as an industry we would have solved IT-security long ago.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Well, I think the general counter for a "cure-for-cancer"
| is the same as electric cars.
|
| The Big4 never wanted EVs with there being a documentary
| [1] on how much they hated them. However, a company that
| isn't the big-4 has no issue with creating one.
|
| Same with a cure-for-cancer. Sure, maybe Pfizer doesn't
| want to cannabalize their market but anybody that isn't
| Pfizer would love to.
|
| I don't think IT-security fits into the same model
| though. There's a lot of money in theft so you need a lot
| of money into anti-theft to counter-act it.
|
| Poverty imo fits the IT-security model more-so than cure-
| for-cancer. Each dollar you don't pay somebody in
| Madagascar to farm vanilla is a dollar you get to keep.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electri
| c_Car%3F
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I think the strongest counter-signal that there's a "secret
| cure for cancer" is that rich, powerful people still get it
| (in various forms), go through debilitating treatment, and
| often still die.
|
| Unless, of course, they're faking their deaths and
| transplanting their consciounesses into younger, healthy
| bodies. Then I got nothing.
| hluska wrote:
| Your friend isn't very smart and you'd likely be better off
| if you stopped quoting them. You've just lumped every single
| NGO in with a very small minority of bad ones - three seconds
| of research would have spared you from writing that.
| grafmax wrote:
| The World Bank is not an NGO. It's owned and run by 189
| governments. It's not a private organization.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > When the benchmark changes, you should ask 'why.'
|
| The article goes into detail about why the poverty line
| changed. You must have skimmed past the secrion titled "How the
| World Bank sets the International Poverty Line".
|
| The TLDR; is that it is at root based on the median poverty
| line set by the government of very poor countries (which is
| calculated in a complex way that is explained in footnotes and
| cited articles.)
|
| At root, it isn't NGOs that caused the number to change, but it
| was inderectly caused by changes in how poor countries measure
| poverty themselves.
| hluska wrote:
| I'm not sure where to begin. The World Bank is not an NGO and
| is not funded like you think. And (to steal your phrase) TFA
| explains it in detail - purchasing power parity was updated so
| the number was updated. All in, this comment is nonsense.
| waffleiron wrote:
| Why on hacker news when it comes to tech salaries, if they stay
| for a year the same everyone calls it a reduction due to
| inflation.
|
| However in cases of poor people and poverty there must be an
| ulterior motive.
| lovich wrote:
| It's a VC backed forum, there's a bias towards a population
| that looks down on the poor and fetishizes wealth.
|
| It's not everyone or even a majority but because of the VC
| backing it's going to be more than the general population
| Steven420 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that hn is removing comment's/post's
| that don't look down on the poor or fetishize wealth? I'm
| not sure how hn being vc backed has any influence on how I
| or anyone else here comments
| bryzaguy wrote:
| It sounds like parent comment is suggesting that hn
| attracts a demographic of people who look down on the
| poor and fetishize wealth, not that it's suppressing
| posts or trying to influence comments.
| rambojohnson wrote:
| Ah so the whole theory rests on "poverty numbers went up,
| therefore NGOs must be moving the goalposts to keep the cash
| flowing", backed by nothing but your own suspicion, then
| wrapped in a half-baked sentence about "maybe it was
| legitimate" so you can claim neutrality. Got it.
| ljsprague wrote:
| He didn't actually make that claim. He's just making sure we
| know NGOs have a "preference" for which way the numbers go.
| downrightmike wrote:
| If there aren't enough poor people, the NGOs can just start
| buying SFH like every other entity
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