Talk:Extreme poverty

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Untitled
Weird. So according to this 1$ definition less people will be poor when the US$ devaluates. And over time less people will be poor, simply because of because of inflation. So this definition seems utter nonsense to me. Could someone explain to me why it is not? Or point to some more knowledgeable critique of this definition? G-u-a-k-@ 00:27, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Though the number of people "earning less than a dollar a day" is a common figure cited when discussing global poverty, the methods by which one might calculate what a dollar is worth in developing countries are several and complex. Certainly the meaning of the phrase will change with inflation, and people who use this metric would have to take that into account.

This article is confused; it uses the term "abosolute poverty" to mean "very bad poverty" when income inequality metrics defines it as a technical term, which means poverty as measured by what you can afford, not by how you compare to others. I think it's best just to merge this article there, if there's anything here worth saving. -- Beland 07:14, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Absolute Poverty

Someone living beyond the edge of subsistence, whose continued existence is dependent on the active charity of others. May have a religious or world renouncing component if voluntary... User:swhit41


 * So if you look on Poverty, you'll see that there are two meanings to the term "absolute poverty", one of which is the percentage of people below some poverty line, and the other of which means "extreme poverty". The first meaning is already discussed at Income inequality metrics, and the remainder could easily be integrated into the discussion of absoluete/extreme poverty at Poverty.  If this subject is going to expand into its own article (which could certainly be worthwhile), perhaps it would be best to rename it "extreme poverty" (or similar) instead, to avoid the confusion. -- Beland 03:23, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Someone please clarify what is meant when the intro refers to US $1.50 a day and A $2 a day. 1 Aus dollar is worth more than one USD, currencies are not interchangeable. us 1.50 does not = aud$2, please fix. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.175.170.121 (talk) 10:41, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

@Guaka It is measured in Purchasing Power Parity exchange rates (PPP) the dollars a day poverty line is adjusted according to this. The poverty line is currently 2005 PPP.--98.122.177.25 (talk) 20:58, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Absolute Poverty
It is ridiculous that I get forwarded to this article when I enter "absolute poverty". Absolute poverty means that poverty is defined without referring to the general income level in a society. Absolute poverty has nothing to do with extreme poverty. This is the ideology of the poverty lobbyists who never want to speak about absolute poverty but always about income distribution. Wikipedia should not subscribe to any ideology! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.43.225.154 (talk) 22:29, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Semantic split
OK, I edited the article to clearly differentiate between the two meanings. What I was thinking was that the "In economics" part should move to Poverty line, since in this sense, being in "absolute poverty" means nothing more than being below someone's "poverty line." The material left over fot the section on how the phrase is used to mean "extreme poverty" is barely more than a dictionary definition, and so should either be moved to Wiktionary, merged with Poverty, or both. -- Beland 04:44, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Solution?
I suggest that we reserve the absolute poverty to mean 'below some poverty line.' and transfer the other to the dictionary if not just deleting. Can I just merge the pages? (I am new).
 * Extreme poverty is not the same as living below the poverty line.--69.156.204.111 18:34, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

An interesting metric?
How many die of /it/ each day?

I've heard 30,000 a day (every day) die of /extreme poverty/. Yes? No?

Was it better last week?

Clearly -- the /brave ones/ that die of starvation or simple disease could be considered "extremely poor". (way too poor to read these words...)

There must be a more extreme term for those that die in poverty...

Clearly the number changes, and could be tracked and studied. A regular newspaper feature...

Well... something has to replace the poetry column...

Copyright issues with this article
Substantial portions of the "statistics" section of this article appear to be cut & pasted directly from http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/3-MP-PovertyFacts-E.pdf in direct violation of the website's terms and conditions at http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/disclaimer.htm. I've flagged this with copypaste. --Rogerb67 (talk) 22:48, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Hip-Hop songs about poverty
in the article it tells yu about hip hop artist making songs about poverty. they are talkin about relative poverty, not absolute poverty, which is what the page is about. why did whoever put that bullet point in put it in the absolute poverty article? it shuld be in the relative poverty saection —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.43.193.176 (talk) 17:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

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"Income-based definition" section needs improvements for clarity
This section gives a very confusing array of thresholds. Can we re-word it to make clearer that the threshold was USD 1 in 1996, USD 1.25 in 2005 and USD 1.90 in 2015?

The wording should account for the changes and also to be explicit that the measurement is in USD.

Matthew C. Clarke 03:11, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Also needs updated generally. It notes 2010 at the most recent reliable data based off a 2010 reference. Here is a 2015 one noting further significant drops https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20Summary%20web_english.pdf I'm going to add it and try to update some things, but some of the discussion there references previous sentences with other references also from 2010 so there is more work to do updating this. Phil (talk) 13:03, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Is poverty decreasing?
We could use some more eyes on this: Talk:List_of_common_misconceptions. Also, there is the question of whether the proposed misconception should be added to this or another article on poverty. --David Tornheim (talk) 02:02, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, especially since a lot of economists regard the World Bank's definition to reflect a pretty significant conflict of interest. They represent a lot of powerful economic institutions and people who are pretty happy to see wages being low and hours being high around the world. They actively seek to make the poverty line as low as humanly possible to argue good living conditions. Yet there's no criticism or controversy page. Also it doesn't adjust for cost of living, which makes the international poverty line pretty meaningless. If you're a homeless person in New York who lives on 200 dollars a month, then you might have worse living conditions than someone who lives below the poverty line in Guatemala for instance. Because median rent in Guatemala is 50 dollars (roughly), whereas it can run in the thousands in New York. So in Guatemala you got a home, in New York you don't. Rich countries don't always benefit poor people, and you can't measure poverty with daily income without context. Point is, someone should point out how a lot of economists would argue that the World Bank is a pretty unscholarly institution that serves as a PR wing for western corporations. Because I know they're not dumb, they know economics, they're just intentionally misinforming people. 78.69.180.157 (talk) 20:26, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Skewed and debatable definitions used here
Tamcgath (talk) 21:45, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

I want to agree with David here. Most serious poverty scholars don't take the $1.90 level seriously since it doesn't factor in things like food costs or nutrition. You can actually see that even when they bumped it up from $1.25 from 2005 PPP to $1.90 to 2015, the food prices have gone up significantly since then. And global hunger has increased. This article desperately needs some more contending voices on here. I'd suggest pulling in some insights from Jason Hickel's book, The Divide. Here is more on his blog: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty. I'd like to possibly edit and add a criticism section here.

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New Criticism
Hi. I don't know how to edit Wikipedia, but there is important new criticism of this metric that claims to measure extreme poverty. It's an arbitrary metric and doesn't seem to account for the difference between people who have a house and land and food in the ground but may average $1.50/day income, versus someone who has nothing but may get $2/day somehow. The former would be much better off, obviously. Anyway, here is some recent critique in this vein, and there is much more. I don't know how to even do links in Wikipedia but maybe this will work. The link should lead to a recent essay by Jason Hickel at https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents

Hope this critique about Enclosure and the nature of what is being called "extreme poverty" and the faults of this metric. Thanks. John.

Just adding to this, many good Wikipedia pages seem to have a section on criticisms of a subject and that seems to be missing here. I actually came to this page to look for such a section and think if someone could add it that would be useful for future readers. Unfortunately, the editing system seems a bit overwhelming to me so I´ll leave it to you smart people :) - UDRF/Jakob — Preceding unsigned comment added by Udrf (talk • contribs) 11:58, 19 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Yes, it needs critique. It also makes it seem as if $1.90/day in 2011 is the threshold everywhere, but it's not. It is adjusted (mostly downward) by PPP which is not mentioned clearly in the lede. 216.19.250.77 (talk) 12:04, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Outdated
This article reflects only pre-covid statistics about the decrease of extreme poverty and doesn't show updated graphics and updated paragraphs. Someone should add a "covid impacts" session to this article. Araukan (talk) 21:56, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Should there be a criticism section?
It seems like measuring poverty is a pretty controversial thing and i think it would be important to include criticism of the measure to keep the article well rounded. I would add it myself but im quite bad at writing and dont want to ruin an otherwise well made page. 150.203.2.217 (talk) 20:20, 18 February 2022 (UTC)