How do we know the history of extreme poverty? (2019)
ourworldindata.org
ourworldindata.org
Similar to how the plots themselves contain and compress a multitude of information, and we've all learned some generally shared ways to process that information (what an upward sloping means, what diverging lines mean, and others), is there a way to add information such that we have a similar shared way to process the _source_ of the data? I know that listing of sources themselves are intended for this, but unless it's your actual job to process that type of information it seems unreasonable to ask a normal person trying to live their life to track down that final information.
For example, according to this metric, the vast majority of poverty reduction happened in China. What factors can we attribute to that development? Well even asking that question means we have to go back and look at other metrics and means by which to understand economic systems and the distribution of material goods. The moment we ask a pretty basic, but arguably more relevant and useful question, we have to throw this metric away and do something else.
And when I've encountered this information in this past, the utility seems to be more about propaganda and lazy inferences than anything else, and often among famous academics. While we all have our bubbles, it does make you question the point of trying to make poverty just one quantity.
I didn't get much from it, except to the extent that I could imagine the lives of actual people in extreme poverty, which is not very much.
It did get me thinking though. Not about extreme poverty, but about just getting by.
If I was working multiple minimum wage jobs to feed my family and put a roof over their head, and had to put up with appalling behaviour from my bosses, and appalling conditions that did not consider my state of being, I might not be counted as being in extreme poverty.
And if I avoided any health crises that would terminate my employment for the rest of my life, I might die without having ever been counted as being in extreme poverty.
But what would be the difference between my life and the life of people who had more control over their circumstances, and experienced more respect in their workplace from their bosses and peers?
How would I know?
How would anyone know?
If you'd like to "challenge popular notions" in some more interesting way, that of course is fine.
Define poverty as something than just income from wages. Can you "fix" poverty? Compared to my living standards I know people who I consider living in poverty but to them it is just life and they are used to government help. While a noble or laudable effort, giving them money holds them back.
In general, welfare benefits cement or create a lower class. I think our view of poverty is really just class guilt and fear.
I don’t really buy either
If you have another (or more) in mind it would have been more enlightening to the rest of us if you had named them.
And yet your first comment is asserting that Marxist historiography is the definition of the study of history:
> The study of history is the study of struggle between classes.
Marxism for the american academy refers to the liberal strand of it (e.g. the kind that John Bellamy Foster advocates for) rather than the authoritarian flavors.
The left-wing bias in parts of the academy is real.
Those 2 humans give birth to 6 children. 2 of them die because of a disease. Are the children who grew up to adulthood the rich class? Repeat this until there are 100 people. They organize, they build and invent things. The rich are born, not by nature but by society. Wealth is a product of society.
Not true. Our standards define poverty either as the inability to afford lower-tier living expenses, or as the inability to ensure an income higher than a certain quantille of the population's income distribution (typically around 60% of the median income )
Both interpretations of poverty imply that none of your hypothetical examples represent poverty.
Also job and food insecurity.
https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/
https://www.epi.org/publication/top-charts-of-2018-twelve-ch...
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/eat-for-1-50-per-day-layo...
No comment on job security or wealth inequality.
One of the main quantitative definitions of poverty is the at-risk-of-poverty rate, which is defined as 60% of the median income.
Income inequality is expressed as an income distribution that's lopsided, thus leading the threshold to cover a greater share of the population.
> Just as we need to adjust for price inflation, accounting for non-market sources of income is an essential part of making meaningful welfare comparisons over time.
The article never says how they account for non-market sources of income, i.e. those things without a price. I'm sure there's a dozen links to various papers, but I expect the question posed in the article to be answered in the article, rather than be fobbed off with pat tautologies such as "historians know about history"!
A long academic read nonetheless...