Right. So that gets me curious about how did they estimate the percentage of people living in "extreme poverty" in, say, 1850 China, and what are the error bars on that estimate.
Speaking qualitatively, if we take the "living on the edge of subsistence" meaning, the charts say that around 90% of the human population lived "on the edge of subsistence" in mid-XIX century. Is that so? I am not sure it matches my intuition well. Even if we look at Asia, at peasantry of Russia and China, say, these people weren't well-off, but I have doubts about the "edge of subsistence" for all of them. Of course, a great deal of their economy was non-trade local which makes estimating their consumption in something like 2009 US dollars... difficult.
Seems to be mostly Asia getting richer. Hans Rosling gives a very impressive talk with amazing visuals about that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w You can also play with the data for yourself http://www.gapminder.org/world
Well, the trend in the second chart is clearly unsustainable, so it's hardly something to get too excited about. I would be happy if the second chart showed poverty dropping off while total population stayed roughly flat.
The developments you highlight are impressive indeed. But you're making it sound as though everyone should agree with your normative judgments. You imply that doubling extreme poverty would be a good thing if it comes with a doubling of the rest of the population. This view is not uncontroversial and many EAs would disagree with it. Please respect that other people will disagree with your value judgments.
I think he's showing the opposite. The first graph does imply what you say. The second graph shows that EVEN if we look at number of people in extreme poverty as an absolute, rather than a ratio, we've been making steady progress since 1971 and are now below 1820 levels of poverty.
It's not judgement-free, as nothing on this topic can or should be. However, it's showing that the positive results are robust to multiple dimensions that people are likely to judge on.
To be specific: what normative judgement do you prefer for which this graph is misleading? Or are you saying "there are important things not covered in either graph", which is true of pretty much any such summary.
Wouldn't the addition of money into economies where it was previously a less-than-frequent enabler of the flow of goods and services cause this to be overstated?
Individual wealth has diminishing returns on investment. The marginal utility of each extra dollar of income is less. There's reason to believe that we'll have to slowly shift the focus of our efforts elseware, if we want to continue making equally huge strides forward.
We hit the UN's old goal of having extreme poverty level from 1990. We even did it 5 years ahead of the 2015 target date, which is fantastic. But if we want to hit the next set of goals, we'll need more than just more economic growth. For example, this TED talk indicates that all of the UN's...
The chart is flawed -- it doesn't contain numbers predating the Industrial Revolution, when many of the agricultural workers who lived off the land tended to be much happier than the overworked, depressed populations of today. What's the point of "productivity" if you don't have the free time to enjoy the fruits of your labor? Our current system is designed to benefit the people at the top, regardless of how much the exploited lower and middle class workers are paid.
Cross-posted from my blog here.
One of the greatest successes of mankind over the last few centuries has been the enormous amount of wealth that has been created. Once upon a time virtually everyone lived in grinding poverty; now, thanks to the forces of science, capitalism and total factor productivity, we produce enough to support a much larger population at a much higher standard of living.
EAs being a highly intellectual lot, our preferred form of ritual celebration is charts. The ordained chart for celebrating this triumph of our people is the Declining Share of People Living in Extreme Poverty Chart.
(Source)
However, as a heretic, I think this chart is a mistake. What is so great about reducing the share? We could achieve that by killing all the poor people, but that would not be a good thing! Life is good, and poverty is not death; it is simply better for it to be rich.
As such, I think this is a much better chart. Here we show the world population. Those in extreme poverty are in purple – not red, for their existence is not bad. Those who the wheels of progress have lifted into wealth unbeknownst to our ancestors, on the other hand, are depicted in blue, rising triumphantly.
Long may their rise continue.