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"One estimate, generated by Laurence Chandy and Brina Seidel of the Brookings Institution, recently calculated that the global poverty gap — meaning how much it

"One estimate, generated by Laurence Chandy and Brina Seidel of the Brookings Institution, recently calculated that the global poverty gap — meaning how much it would take to get everyone above the poverty line — was just $66 billion. That is roughly what Americans spend on lottery tickets every year, and it is about half of what the world spends on foreign aid." Love this.

einars 10y ago
I also liked this: A vast majority of aid — 94 percent — is noncash. Donor resistance is one reason for this; it is not easy to persuade American oligarchs, British inheritors and Japanese industrialists to fork over their money to the extremely poor to use as they see fit. “There’s the usual worries about welfare dependency, the whole ‘Give a man a fish’ thing,” said Amanda Glassman, a public health and development expert at the Center for Global Development. “It’s so powerful. It’s really a basic psychological feature of the landscape. You’ll start drinking. You’ll start lying around at home because you’re getting paid.” ... If cash transfers flourished, “the whole aid industry would have to fire itself.”
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Key words to remember there... "Aid industry".
- Eridrus 10y ago
  I'm not against cash transfers, but I feel like they can't solve everything, having a bit more money won't necessarily cause hospitals or schools to appear, so I think that some non-cash support will continue to be necessary to provide expertise that they couldn't obtain on the free market.
  - jhlgkhkhil 10y ago
    If direct cash transfers work the economy of the recipient country will grow. They can then afford to build their own schools and hospitals - and employ teachers and doctors to work in them.
    - greyman 10y ago
      If honest and moral people will rise to the leadership positions - which is not what always happens.
  - thehardsphere 10y ago
    Part of the arrogance of the current providers of non-cash support is their foreign, detached judgement that hospitals or schools are the best ways to help people. As if we can just transport shiny buildings to the third world and magically solve all the problems there because those buildings work great in the first world.
harryh 10y ago
I'm really curious about the math on that $66 billion number. According to the world bank there are about 750 million people living in extreme poverty. We only need to give them $88/year to get them out of it? And that's just the people in "extreme poverty." It'll be even less if we move up the income scale a bit. The number seems low to me.
- chrispeel 10y ago
  The doc [1] below agrees that there are about 700m in extreme poverty now, which it defines as living below $2/day. If we gave each of those people $2/day, we'd need $550billion/year. So yes, $66b seems low for the $2/day threshold. I wonder if this $66b is for those who are below $1/day. Looking at the plot in [1], we can guess that the number at $1/day is much lower; $66b would give 181 million people a dollar a day. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/ https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/
  - jakewins 10y ago
    You need to take into account that these people are not living on absolute nil - they have some level of income, be it $1 or $.50 - so you don't need to give each of them $2/day. The OP article noted the amount needed in the village in the beginning was $22/month, so $.75 a day, give or take 10c.
    - ci5er 10y ago
      And the system for means-testing at that level would be expensive enough to run, with opportunities for graft, false-positives, and false-natives, that means-testing would be a losing proposition. Just pick a level and make sure no one is double-dipping. You still have the problem of regional thugs that will come round every "pay day" for their taste. Or beat you up. A pretty simple variation a protection racket, but I'm not sure how to protect against it.
  - loteck 10y ago
    there are about 700m in extreme poverty now, which it defines as living below $2/day. If we gave each of those people $2/day, we'd need $550billion/year 700m × $2 = $1.4b. What am I missing?
marmot777 10y ago
That puts the problem in perspective. This is a solvable problem. I'm a fan of solvable problems and people who solve them.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  It is solvable in simplistic terms. It is not solvable by throwing money at it. It just an dumb attempt to guilt people and further this constant bemoaning there are some super rich people in our world. Most people are poor because of their government. Either through corruption, lack of property rights, or wars both internal and external. We cannot fix poverty in this world until people are guaranteed freedom and safety of person and their property.
  - marmot777 10y ago
    How do you define simplistic terms? If you were hungry and someone gave you enough money to eat, that would be a solution regardless of how corrupt your government. I don't know where you live but I'm in the U.S. where it's obvious the number of jobs is going to decline relative to the number of people who need them. Resources won't necessarily decline along with the jobs so I see this as not just applicable to the developing world and not just to solve poverty but to act as a stabilizing force. On what do you base your claim this is a dumb attempt to guilt people? You're suggestion that's the motivation of those who are backing and implementing this test? I don't really understand the idea that no action should be taken unless these conditions are met and these conditions are always outside the reach of those who want to act so they shouldn't act because conditions aren't perfect? I don't think anyone's claiming that testing UI's objective is to see if it will lead to a utopia, otherwise it's a no-go. No, we can't fix poverty if you define fix as a perfect solution that works always and everywhere but if perfect conditions had to be met before anyone acted nobody would do anything productive or useful. I guess I find your line of argument strange because it does not appear to be founded on anything at all that's coherent, though I'm hoping you can alleviate that problem by explaining it coherently.
    - thehardsphere 10y ago
marmot777 10y ago
Do you know what the number would be if you included developed countries in the calculation? Or perhaps better worded, how much would the total tab for this be per year? Of course, it's crazy to think it'll be implemented in every corner of the world but maybe this thing will work so well that the holdouts will end up doing it.

einars 10y ago

I also liked this: A vast majority of aid — 94 percent — is noncash. Donor resistance is one reason for this; it is not easy to persuade American oligarchs, British inheritors and Japanese industrialists to fork over their money to the extremely poor to use as they see fit. “There’s the usual worries about welfare dependency, the whole ‘Give a man a fish’ thing,” said Amanda Glassman, a public health and development expert at the Center for Global Development. “It’s so powerful. It’s really a basic psychological feature of the landscape. You’ll start drinking. You’ll start lying around at home because you’re getting paid.” ... If cash transfers flourished, “the whole aid industry would have to fire itself.”

M_Grey 10y ago
Key words to remember there... "Aid industry".
Eridrus 10y ago
I'm not against cash transfers, but I feel like they can't solve everything, having a bit more money won't necessarily cause hospitals or schools to appear, so I think that some non-cash support will continue to be necessary to provide expertise that they couldn't obtain on the free market.
- jhlgkhkhil 10y ago
  If direct cash transfers work the economy of the recipient country will grow. They can then afford to build their own schools and hospitals - and employ teachers and doctors to work in them.
  - greyman 10y ago
    If honest and moral people will rise to the leadership positions - which is not what always happens.
- thehardsphere 10y ago
  Part of the arrogance of the current providers of non-cash support is their foreign, detached judgement that hospitals or schools are the best ways to help people. As if we can just transport shiny buildings to the third world and magically solve all the problems there because those buildings work great in the first world.

harryh 10y ago

I'm really curious about the math on that $66 billion number. According to the world bank there are about 750 million people living in extreme poverty. We only need to give them $88/year to get them out of it? And that's just the people in "extreme poverty." It'll be even less if we move up the income scale a bit. The number seems low to me.

chrispeel 10y ago
The doc [1] below agrees that there are about 700m in extreme poverty now, which it defines as living below $2/day. If we gave each of those people $2/day, we'd need $550billion/year. So yes, $66b seems low for the $2/day threshold. I wonder if this $66b is for those who are below $1/day. Looking at the plot in [1], we can guess that the number at $1/day is much lower; $66b would give 181 million people a dollar a day. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/ https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/
- jakewins 10y ago
  You need to take into account that these people are not living on absolute nil - they have some level of income, be it $1 or $.50 - so you don't need to give each of them $2/day. The OP article noted the amount needed in the village in the beginning was $22/month, so $.75 a day, give or take 10c.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    And the system for means-testing at that level would be expensive enough to run, with opportunities for graft, false-positives, and false-natives, that means-testing would be a losing proposition. Just pick a level and make sure no one is double-dipping. You still have the problem of regional thugs that will come round every "pay day" for their taste. Or beat you up. A pretty simple variation a protection racket, but I'm not sure how to protect against it.
- loteck 10y ago
  there are about 700m in extreme poverty now, which it defines as living below $2/day. If we gave each of those people $2/day, we'd need $550billion/year 700m × $2 = $1.4b. What am I missing?

marmot777 10y ago

That puts the problem in perspective. This is a solvable problem. I'm a fan of solvable problems and people who solve them.

Shivetya 10y ago
It is solvable in simplistic terms. It is not solvable by throwing money at it. It just an dumb attempt to guilt people and further this constant bemoaning there are some super rich people in our world. Most people are poor because of their government. Either through corruption, lack of property rights, or wars both internal and external. We cannot fix poverty in this world until people are guaranteed freedom and safety of person and their property.
- marmot777 10y ago
  How do you define simplistic terms? If you were hungry and someone gave you enough money to eat, that would be a solution regardless of how corrupt your government. I don't know where you live but I'm in the U.S. where it's obvious the number of jobs is going to decline relative to the number of people who need them. Resources won't necessarily decline along with the jobs so I see this as not just applicable to the developing world and not just to solve poverty but to act as a stabilizing force. On what do you base your claim this is a dumb attempt to guilt people? You're suggestion that's the motivation of those who are backing and implementing this test? I don't really understand the idea that no action should be taken unless these conditions are met and these conditions are always outside the reach of those who want to act so they shouldn't act because conditions aren't perfect? I don't think anyone's claiming that testing UI's objective is to see if it will lead to a utopia, otherwise it's a no-go. No, we can't fix poverty if you define fix as a perfect solution that works always and everywhere but if perfect conditions had to be met before anyone acted nobody would do anything productive or useful. I guess I find your line of argument strange because it does not appear to be founded on anything at all that's coherent, though I'm hoping you can alleviate that problem by explaining it coherently.
  - thehardsphere 10y ago

marmot777 10y ago

Do you know what the number would be if you included developed countries in the calculation? Or perhaps better worded, how much would the total tab for this be per year? Of course, it's crazy to think it'll be implemented in every corner of the world but maybe this thing will work so well that the holdouts will end up doing it.