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> What we should really worry about is the poverty gap - the amount of income people need to get people above the poverty line. Is that not showing an increase

> What we should really worry about is the poverty gap - the amount of income people need to get people above the poverty line. Is that not showing an increase right now too? I mean, I don't disagree that serious analysis needs more info than a single number. But... what's the policy distinction here that you're trying to argue? There's no mystery to the current situation: people are out of work due to the pandemic and making a lot less money, and that's bad. Edit: two replies have responded by repeating the theoretical distinction and proposing scenarios where the two metrics would diverge. I understand that part. I'm asking if there is any evidence RIGHT NOW that this is the wrong metric to look at. Because naively, you'd really expect that people losing a lot of jobs to covid would simultaneously increase the population of people below the poverty line AND the average/median incomes of those people already below it. And if that's true, and it seems to be, why are we arguing about minutiae about metrics? The cause, and the solution, is the same in either case.

hirsin 6y ago
"Reduce the number of people in poverty by 50%" is a different goal than "Reduce the net poverty gap by 50%". A real headline can be that fewer people are in poverty than last year but the dollar sum of poverty is higher. Effective policy considers the true goal - people are living better - and takes into account Goodhart's law as possible. I would say OP is arguing that the latter goal metric is better for humans than the former, and I agree.
dghlsakjg 6y ago
If there are 5mm people below the poverty line and they all make $1 under the limit then you can close the gap, and reduce the poverty rate to 0 by giving each person a dollar. If they are all making $10 below the limit then you can evenly distribute the money and reduce the gap by 10% while keeping the poverty rate the same. Or you can give all of the money to only 10% of the population and reduce the poverty rate by 10% while the gap remains the same.

hirsin 6y ago

"Reduce the number of people in poverty by 50%" is a different goal than "Reduce the net poverty gap by 50%". A real headline can be that fewer people are in poverty than last year but the dollar sum of poverty is higher. Effective policy considers the true goal - people are living better - and takes into account Goodhart's law as possible. I would say OP is arguing that the latter goal metric is better for humans than the former, and I agree.

dghlsakjg 6y ago

If there are 5mm people below the poverty line and they all make $1 under the limit then you can close the gap, and reduce the poverty rate to 0 by giving each person a dollar. If they are all making $10 below the limit then you can evenly distribute the money and reduce the gap by 10% while keeping the poverty rate the same. Or you can give all of the money to only 10% of the population and reduce the poverty rate by 10% while the gap remains the same.