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Comment by myth_buster | Hacker News Reader

I'm always wary of the numbers that are put out. There has been long history of fudging numbers to fit a narrative. The unemployment numbers in the US comes to mind as such an example.

So, the question is how realistic is the extreme poverty line. And this doesn't help it much:

  The World Bank first introduced a global poverty line in 1990, 
  setting it at $1 a day. 
  It was adjusted last in 2008, when the group raised it to $1.25 a day.

$1 seems like such a convenient number to pick!

An interesting graph will be to plot the extreme poverty threshold against inflation _in_emerging_countries_.

With the falling emerging market currencies and extreme inflation (hyper-inflation perhaps), I don't think that $1.90 a day cuts it.

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WB fixed it in terms of constant International $, with base year 2005 - if I can remember correctly. So it's already inflation adjusted because it's at constant prices and not nominal prices.

Having said that, in most developing countries, being on the poverty line would mean that you have just enough for clothing and feeding yourself.

Nevertheless, it's exciting to see millions graduating out of it in just a decade. Specially for me, because I'm Indian.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY

    Population below $1.25 a day is the percentage 
    of the population living on less than $1.25 a 
    day at 2005 international prices

Also you might find this interesting - http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH...

   Moreover, the choice between $1.00 a day and $1.25 
   a day (or even higher lines) makes no difference to 
   the Bank’s claim that measures of absolute poverty 
   have fallen in the developing world over 1981-2005.

It's the purchasing power of $1.25/day, rather than the absolute value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

Your point about the semi-arbitrary nature of the poverty line is good, but the figure is already inflation-adjusted. There is a general confusion on HN when it comes to real vs. nominal statistics. [1]

I find it's generally safe to assume that most of the well-respected development organizations are made up of smart people that know what they are doing and will not overlook something so fundamental as inflation, even if they do use statistics to advance their agendas from time to time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10335838

I'm not questioning their intelligence just their approach.

  well-respected development organizations are made up of smart people 
  that know what they are doing

Well, that was the thought about the financial industry, FCC, S&P etc before 2007.

Would the incentives of people working in well-respected development organisations be equally twisted to those of S&P etc before 2007? I don't think so.

> The unemployment numbers in the US comes to mind as such an example.

The unemployment numbers in the US are reported as such (ie: only reporting the number of people looking for jobs vs people employed) because they've been consistently reported like that since the late 1800s.

The "real" unemployment numbers are still taken from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/

Every statistic you want is there.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

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