Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to I guess a 12% poverty rate is good by world standards

By maybe any standards.
TB — (archived)

In a post to Lindy down below--from the same source, incidentally--I pointed out that the poverty rate in the U.S. has been quite steady over the past forty years, floating between 11 and 15 percent almost all of that time. 12.6 percent is lower than at any time between 1979 and 1999.

I believe, although I haven't done the homework, that the steady rate may be largely due to poverty being redefined over time as percentages of an average income. It's possible that the rate mathematically can't vary by much. Again, that's just a guess. I have no evidence of it.

If you look at a chart of percent of population below the poverty line, the U.S., out of 130 nations, only 13 are better off than the U.S.

To be fair, this is not a complete list of countries. I have no idea, for example, why Australia, which would certainly have a low poverty level, isn't on this list. Also, obviously "poverty level" in Zambia is going to be a different income than "poverty level" in the United Kingdom.

The poverty threshold in the U.S. is shown here. How would this compare to incomes around the world, even in more advanced nations?

The World Bank has found that extreme poverty in developing nations fell from 28 percent in 1990 to 19 percent in 2002. The population during that time in those nations increased by 20 percent. This isn't a sign of victory over poverty by any measurement, but it's a sign of progress.

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