8 ms·

How do we know the history of extreme poverty? (2019)

83 points by dan-robertson 6y ago

fouc 6y ago
Historical reconstruction using a data-focused approach is pretty interesting.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  What did you find interesting about the article? I didn't get much from it, except to the extent that I could imagine the lives of actual people in extreme poverty, which is not very much. It did get me thinking though. Not about extreme poverty, but about just getting by. If I was working multiple minimum wage jobs to feed my family and put a roof over their head, and had to put up with appalling behaviour from my bosses, and appalling conditions that did not consider my state of being, I might not be counted as being in extreme poverty. And if I avoided any health crises that would terminate my employment for the rest of my life, I might die without having ever been counted as being in extreme poverty. But what would be the difference between my life and the life of people who had more control over their circumstances, and experienced more respect in their workplace from their bosses and peers? How would I know? How would anyone know?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It’s a hard question, but in practice I’m not sure there’s a tradeoff. A hundred years ago, the least fortunate would have been working 12 hour shifts locked into in a sweatshop that doesn’t care if they burn to death, or putting in backbreaking labor to keep their farm barely above water before losing it all in the Dust Bowl.
cl42 6y ago
For those interested in this topic, I found "Enlightenment Now"[1] to be a great read (the audio book is good too). We take so much of our progress for granted and often look at progress from too short a time horizon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now
leg100 6y ago
I found this very painful to read, it's painfully slow to get to the point...actually, it doesn't even answer the question posed in the title. > Just as we need to adjust for price inflation, accounting for non-market sources of income is an essential part of making meaningful welfare comparisons over time. The article never says how they account for non-market sources of income, i.e. those things without a price. I'm sure there's a dozen links to various papers, but I expect the question posed in the article to be answered in the article, rather than be fobbed off with pat tautologies such as "historians know about history"!
- ricw 6y ago
  They actually do. He describes in detail how agricultural production is estimated using historic data in farmland, yields and how it is painstakingly adjusted per region. In other words the tedious work needed to actually do this. A long academic read nonetheless...
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
Meanwhile inequality and poverty are skyrocketing in wealthy countries that have more than enough for everybody. Also job and food insecurity. https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/ https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/ https://www.epi.org/publication/top-charts-of-2018-twelve-charts-that-show-how-policy-could-reduce-inequality-but-is-making-it-worse-instead/ https://www.epi.org/publication/top-charts-of-2018-twelve-ch...
- throwawayfood 6y ago
  I urge you not to use food insecurity in argument. Even outside food stamps, food is extremely affordable to eat perfectly healthy. If nothing else it's an education issue, not a food issue. https://efficiencyiseverything.com/eat-for-1-50-per-day-layoffs-coronavirus-quarantine-food-shortages/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/eat-for-1-50-per-day-layo... No comment on job security or wealth inequality.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    The usual dishonest comments and dishonest downvotes. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-... https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/responding-stark-rise-food-insecurity-across-poorest-countries https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/responding-stark-rise-foo... I'm done with the HN crowd.
    - anoonmoose 6y ago
      I downvote all comments that complain about downvotes and so do many other people so please don't take the crushing you're taking on this comment as an indicator of disagreement
  - tragomaskhalos 6y ago
    In Britain, where food is more expensive than in the US, ignorance about how to eat affordably and well is a shocking poverty trap. Anecdotally, a family getting pizza delivered will be spending almost an order of magnitude more than they would need to by cooking a nutritious meal from easily available basic ingredients; that's fine for a treat, but if you are relying on it regularly to put food in your kids' stomachs it quickly becomes ruinous.
ctdonath 6y ago
Chronically overlooked point: “it is wrong to think of the last two centuries as being one where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The poor also got richer.”
- TheMblabla 6y ago
  You conveniently leave out the part where the wealth of the rich become many magnitudes larger compared to the poor.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It’s not left out, it’s just a different topic. We’ve gotta be able to discuss economic history without pulling in everyone’s political hobbyhorses.
    - TheMblabla 6y ago
      The study of economics and history are inextricably political lol. And how is what I said any more political than the parent?
      - ctdonath 6y ago
        [deleted]
        TheMblabla 6y ago
        Lol no the parent mentioned it first
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Maybe I’m misreading you, but it doesn’t sound to me like you have any concrete disagreement with the parent comment. It sounds like you’re saying we just shouldn’t talk about the topic of poverty reduction because it will distract attention from your concern about wealth inequality.
TheMblabla 6y ago
The study of history is the study of struggle between classes.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  Through the history of the study of history there have been several ways of doing history (ie historiographies). One is Marxist historiography, trying to find the class struggle in everything. Another is whiggish historiography, named after the Whig history of Britain which viewed history as an inevitable progression towards constitutional monarchy, but which more generally refers to seeing history as intentionally leading to the present day. I don’t really buy either
  - TheMblabla 6y ago
    To only present 'Marxism' and 'Whiggism' as the schools of thought is very silly and a very unflattering explanation of historiography. Neither are really studied in academia anymore and you should read more if you think they are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography
    - kwhitefoot 6y ago
      He said "One .. Another .." not "One .. and the other .." If you have another (or more) in mind it would have been more enlightening to the rest of us if you had named them.
    - dan-robertson 6y ago
      I definitely didn’t mean to suggest that that those are the only possibilities. Only that they are relatively common examples of (what I would consider) bad ways of looking at history, and that I disagree with your claim that history is all about class struggle.
    - kodah 6y ago
      > To only present 'Marxism' and 'Whiggism' as the schools of thought is very silly and a very unflattering explanation of historiography. Neither are really studied in academia anymore and you should read more if you think they are. And yet your first comment is asserting that Marxist historiography is the definition of the study of history: > The study of history is the study of struggle between classes.
akamoonknight 6y ago
"It is the research of hundreds of historians who have carefully assembled thousands of quantitative estimates that inform us about us about people’s living conditions that give us this global perspective on the history of poverty. In public discussions of the history of poverty the extent of this careful work is often overlooked. Such a deceptively simple chart on the global decline of poverty may then be easily dismissed as being based on little evidence." Similar to how the plots themselves contain and compress a multitude of information, and we've all learned some generally shared ways to process that information (what an upward sloping means, what diverging lines mean, and others), is there a way to add information such that we have a similar shared way to process the _source_ of the data? I know that listing of sources themselves are intended for this, but unless it's your actual job to process that type of information it seems unreasonable to ask a normal person trying to live their life to track down that final information.
- shirakawasuna 6y ago
  Consider that summarizing it as a single quantity is already unwarranted and somewhat arbitrary. The question should be about the utility. What is the utility of having one major number that is supposedly quantitative and consistent rather than, say, five metrics related to material status? The latter will provide more opportunity to compare "like to like", after all, and there's no reason that the universe must conform to a single metric being in any way valid. This is made even worse by pinning it to a (controlled) dollar value rather than some aggregate quantity of material well-being. For example, according to this metric, the vast majority of poverty reduction happened in China. What factors can we attribute to that development? Well even asking that question means we have to go back and look at other metrics and means by which to understand economic systems and the distribution of material goods. The moment we ask a pretty basic, but arguably more relevant and useful question, we have to throw this metric away and do something else. And when I've encountered this information in this past, the utility seems to be more about propaganda and lazy inferences than anything else, and often among famous academics. While we all have our bubbles, it does make you question the point of trying to make poverty just one quantity.
AlphaWeaver 6y ago
In case people missed it earlier, the author shared some additional context relating to this post on Twitter today: https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809

83 points by dan-robertson 6y ago

fouc 6y ago

Historical reconstruction using a data-focused approach is pretty interesting.

wombatmobile 6y ago
What did you find interesting about the article? I didn't get much from it, except to the extent that I could imagine the lives of actual people in extreme poverty, which is not very much. It did get me thinking though. Not about extreme poverty, but about just getting by. If I was working multiple minimum wage jobs to feed my family and put a roof over their head, and had to put up with appalling behaviour from my bosses, and appalling conditions that did not consider my state of being, I might not be counted as being in extreme poverty. And if I avoided any health crises that would terminate my employment for the rest of my life, I might die without having ever been counted as being in extreme poverty. But what would be the difference between my life and the life of people who had more control over their circumstances, and experienced more respect in their workplace from their bosses and peers? How would I know? How would anyone know?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It’s a hard question, but in practice I’m not sure there’s a tradeoff. A hundred years ago, the least fortunate would have been working 12 hour shifts locked into in a sweatshop that doesn’t care if they burn to death, or putting in backbreaking labor to keep their farm barely above water before losing it all in the Dust Bowl.

cl42 6y ago

For those interested in this topic, I found "Enlightenment Now"[1] to be a great read (the audio book is good too). We take so much of our progress for granted and often look at progress from too short a time horizon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now

leg100 6y ago

I found this very painful to read, it's painfully slow to get to the point...actually, it doesn't even answer the question posed in the title. > Just as we need to adjust for price inflation, accounting for non-market sources of income is an essential part of making meaningful welfare comparisons over time. The article never says how they account for non-market sources of income, i.e. those things without a price. I'm sure there's a dozen links to various papers, but I expect the question posed in the article to be answered in the article, rather than be fobbed off with pat tautologies such as "historians know about history"!

ricw 6y ago
They actually do. He describes in detail how agricultural production is estimated using historic data in farmland, yields and how it is painstakingly adjusted per region. In other words the tedious work needed to actually do this. A long academic read nonetheless...

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

Meanwhile inequality and poverty are skyrocketing in wealthy countries that have more than enough for everybody. Also job and food insecurity. https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/ https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/ https://www.epi.org/publication/top-charts-of-2018-twelve-charts-that-show-how-policy-could-reduce-inequality-but-is-making-it-worse-instead/ https://www.epi.org/publication/top-charts-of-2018-twelve-ch...

throwawayfood 6y ago
I urge you not to use food insecurity in argument. Even outside food stamps, food is extremely affordable to eat perfectly healthy. If nothing else it's an education issue, not a food issue. https://efficiencyiseverything.com/eat-for-1-50-per-day-layoffs-coronavirus-quarantine-food-shortages/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/eat-for-1-50-per-day-layo... No comment on job security or wealth inequality.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  The usual dishonest comments and dishonest downvotes. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-... https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/responding-stark-rise-food-insecurity-across-poorest-countries https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/responding-stark-rise-foo... I'm done with the HN crowd.
  - anoonmoose 6y ago
    I downvote all comments that complain about downvotes and so do many other people so please don't take the crushing you're taking on this comment as an indicator of disagreement
- tragomaskhalos 6y ago
  In Britain, where food is more expensive than in the US, ignorance about how to eat affordably and well is a shocking poverty trap. Anecdotally, a family getting pizza delivered will be spending almost an order of magnitude more than they would need to by cooking a nutritious meal from easily available basic ingredients; that's fine for a treat, but if you are relying on it regularly to put food in your kids' stomachs it quickly becomes ruinous.

ctdonath 6y ago

Chronically overlooked point: “it is wrong to think of the last two centuries as being one where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The poor also got richer.”

TheMblabla 6y ago
You conveniently leave out the part where the wealth of the rich become many magnitudes larger compared to the poor.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It’s not left out, it’s just a different topic. We’ve gotta be able to discuss economic history without pulling in everyone’s political hobbyhorses.
  - TheMblabla 6y ago
    The study of economics and history are inextricably political lol. And how is what I said any more political than the parent?
    - ctdonath 6y ago
      [deleted]
      - TheMblabla 6y ago
        Lol no the parent mentioned it first
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Maybe I’m misreading you, but it doesn’t sound to me like you have any concrete disagreement with the parent comment. It sounds like you’re saying we just shouldn’t talk about the topic of poverty reduction because it will distract attention from your concern about wealth inequality.

TheMblabla 6y ago

The study of history is the study of struggle between classes.

dan-robertson 6y ago
Through the history of the study of history there have been several ways of doing history (ie historiographies). One is Marxist historiography, trying to find the class struggle in everything. Another is whiggish historiography, named after the Whig history of Britain which viewed history as an inevitable progression towards constitutional monarchy, but which more generally refers to seeing history as intentionally leading to the present day. I don’t really buy either
- TheMblabla 6y ago
  To only present 'Marxism' and 'Whiggism' as the schools of thought is very silly and a very unflattering explanation of historiography. Neither are really studied in academia anymore and you should read more if you think they are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    He said "One .. Another .." not "One .. and the other .." If you have another (or more) in mind it would have been more enlightening to the rest of us if you had named them.
  - dan-robertson 6y ago
    I definitely didn’t mean to suggest that that those are the only possibilities. Only that they are relatively common examples of (what I would consider) bad ways of looking at history, and that I disagree with your claim that history is all about class struggle.
  - kodah 6y ago
    > To only present 'Marxism' and 'Whiggism' as the schools of thought is very silly and a very unflattering explanation of historiography. Neither are really studied in academia anymore and you should read more if you think they are. And yet your first comment is asserting that Marxist historiography is the definition of the study of history: > The study of history is the study of struggle between classes.

akamoonknight 6y ago

"It is the research of hundreds of historians who have carefully assembled thousands of quantitative estimates that inform us about us about people’s living conditions that give us this global perspective on the history of poverty. In public discussions of the history of poverty the extent of this careful work is often overlooked. Such a deceptively simple chart on the global decline of poverty may then be easily dismissed as being based on little evidence." Similar to how the plots themselves contain and compress a multitude of information, and we've all learned some generally shared ways to process that information (what an upward sloping means, what diverging lines mean, and others), is there a way to add information such that we have a similar shared way to process the _source_ of the data? I know that listing of sources themselves are intended for this, but unless it's your actual job to process that type of information it seems unreasonable to ask a normal person trying to live their life to track down that final information.

shirakawasuna 6y ago
Consider that summarizing it as a single quantity is already unwarranted and somewhat arbitrary. The question should be about the utility. What is the utility of having one major number that is supposedly quantitative and consistent rather than, say, five metrics related to material status? The latter will provide more opportunity to compare "like to like", after all, and there's no reason that the universe must conform to a single metric being in any way valid. This is made even worse by pinning it to a (controlled) dollar value rather than some aggregate quantity of material well-being. For example, according to this metric, the vast majority of poverty reduction happened in China. What factors can we attribute to that development? Well even asking that question means we have to go back and look at other metrics and means by which to understand economic systems and the distribution of material goods. The moment we ask a pretty basic, but arguably more relevant and useful question, we have to throw this metric away and do something else. And when I've encountered this information in this past, the utility seems to be more about propaganda and lazy inferences than anything else, and often among famous academics. While we all have our bubbles, it does make you question the point of trying to make poverty just one quantity.

AlphaWeaver 6y ago

In case people missed it earlier, the author shared some additional context relating to this post on Twitter today: https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809