4 ms·
Their definition of poverty is earning below a certain dollar amount ($1.90/day). Their measure of poverty has nothing to do with the access to quality water,
by briantakita 11y ago
Their definition of poverty is earning below a certain dollar amount ($1.90/day).
Their measure of poverty has nothing to do with the access to quality water, quality food, land, quality of life, freedom, personal autonomy, health, safety, etc.
Many indigenous people lived on $0.00/day yet had a higher quality of life; before outside influences (i.e. civilization, imperial, western) disrupted their ecosystems & way of life.
- cuchoi 11y agoIncome is a proxy. There are multidimensional definitions of poverty, but they are too hard to measure and compare across countries.
- msandford 11y agoRight, but I think that's partially the point. When you try and boil things down to a simple number, you lose a ton of information. Perhaps it's not wise to do this extreme metric-izing as it will probably just lead to the metrics being gamed rather than actual improvements.
- mason240 11y agoThey were also living as hunter gathers in very sparsely populated areas. The earth can't support 8 billion people with berry gathering and deer hunting.
- afsina 11y agoStill, this is a relative improvement. There are many other indications (such as infant death ratio) supporting this.
- briantakita 11y agoAs some of the quantitative metrics improve, many of the metrics (particularly of qualitative nature) degrade. Think ecosystems, our usage of resources, quality of life for the average person, etc. > There are many other indications (such as infant death ratio) supporting this. This is one of the many metrics that matter; much more than the percentage of people making > $1.90/day.
- afsina 11y agoI would like to see some kind of metrics/information showing that quality of life of a person has been declining. Because I do believe quality of life has also been increased globally. Edit: "quantitive" is replaced with "some kind of metrics"
- frgewut 11y agoI'm not so sure about infant deaths - this might be a "fail early" mechanism evolved in nature.
- xixi77 11y agowhat's a "qualitative metric"?
- briantakita 11y agoIm thinking of a score on qualitative data. Understand that information is lost in its translation to numbers. It's also interpreted to have meaning. Also understand that values of those assigning the scores plays a large role. For example, an indigenous persob rating quality of life as a score is probably nonsensical to him/her.
- xixi77 11y agoall true -- scores are quantitative metrics though. And yes, rather imprecise and subjective, and a lot of information is lost at all stages. Is there a better way to compare things like a quality of life though? Hmm, perhaps something could be inferred from pairwise comparisons? There are many people out there who have experienced multiple lifestyles; alleviating biases would be really tricky though...
- prodmerc 11y ago"Welcome to civilization. This land's not yours anymore. Want to eat? Work for us."
- tomjen3 11y agoAnd to live that way we only have to let 99% of the population starve. Also they probably had lots more women die giving birth.