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According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the Uni

According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in Italy, Japan and Spain). I tried to track down this factoid. First I went to the world bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=U... which does show 1% for the US. In the notes it says " Data for high-income economies are from the Luxembourg Income Study database." My next stop was there. From http://www.lisdatacenter.org/frontend#/home http://www.lisdatacenter.org/frontend#/home I found that the source of their data was Current Population Survey (CPS) - Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) (United States). The Current Population survey has a table creator here: https://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html https://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html Although there is nothing that quite matches the 3.2 million figure cited, the LIS did some harmonization so the most likely ultimate source is the 3.446 million people living in households that were categorized as having "no income" in 2013. This is separate from the 2.775 million people that were categorized as living in households that have "$1 to $2,499 or loss" in income. I'm very skeptical that this is an appropriate use of this data. The world bank poverty number is supposed to be about consumption--it has to do with people consuming very little in the way of goods and services. But no one at all can live on no goods and services. They'd die of hunger and thirst in far less than a year. It could in theory be the case that millions of Americans were living on less than $1.90/day in consumption but it cannot possibly be the case that millions of Americans are living on $0/day. To the extent that the figure cited for "no income" means anything (and isn't just noise in the data), it doesn't mean what the world bank means when it says living on $1.90/day.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
If the consumption comes from a market, then sure. But during the Depression, millions of rural Americans lived on $0 for years. Kitchen garden, a cow, a pig, some chickens and there you are. So point is, maybe dollars aren't tracking what we think they're tracking?
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  The world bank attempts to measure consumption from all sources, not just those that result from market transactions. Which is a very good reason why it is inappropriate to source a number for the US from a survey that doesn't attempt to measure consumption that way. I understand that the US isn't the primary focus of the project, nor should it be, but in the absence of good data it would be better to put N/A as it did for several other countries, rather than a misleading statistic. There's some good information on measuring consumption starting on page 91 here: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/452741468778781879/pdf/multi-page.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/452741468778781879...

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

If the consumption comes from a market, then sure. But during the Depression, millions of rural Americans lived on $0 for years. Kitchen garden, a cow, a pig, some chickens and there you are. So point is, maybe dollars aren't tracking what we think they're tracking?

bradleyjg 9y ago
The world bank attempts to measure consumption from all sources, not just those that result from market transactions. Which is a very good reason why it is inappropriate to source a number for the US from a survey that doesn't attempt to measure consumption that way. I understand that the US isn't the primary focus of the project, nor should it be, but in the absence of good data it would be better to put N/A as it did for several other countries, rather than a misleading statistic. There's some good information on measuring consumption starting on page 91 here: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/452741468778781879/pdf/multi-page.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/452741468778781879...