4 ms·
This article is deceptive because it speaks of raw numbers rather than percentages. While the number of people living on less than a dollar a day went up throug
by astazangasta 11y ago
This article is deceptive because it speaks of raw numbers rather than percentages. While the number of people living on less than a dollar a day went up throughout the 20th century, this was because populations were exploding over the same period. At the same time, the fraction of people living on less than a dollar a day plunged dramatically. In fact, this trend slowed after 1990 - since then this rate has declined less quickly than it did during the seventies, when it fell from almost 30% to less than 10% in 1985. See https://orderorder.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/capitalism.jpg?w=900 https://orderorder.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/capitalism.jp... e.g.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoThat particular chart seems to show significantly lower numbers than most I've seen. Sub 10% since 1985. This one shows 20% as of 2010. And over 40% in 1990. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/USAID_Projections.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/USAID_Pr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty Also from that article. "n 1990, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty was 43.1%, but in 2010, that percentage had dropped down to 20.6%." That doesn't line up AT ALL with your image which says 10% in 1985. So I'm not sure what's going on here exactly. But I don't think it's as simple as absolute vs percentage deception.
- astazangasta 11y agoDifferent definitions of extreme poverty might change the percentages; however, in all of these it ought to be clear that the rate of poverty declined throughout the twentieth century, it did not go up mid century as Kristof implies.