World Bank claims that we are broadly on course to halve the proportion of people living below the $1 a day poverty line by 2015 are based on a seriously flawed measurement system, says a new report by the New Economics Foundation.The report claims the setting of the $1 dollar a day definition of poverty is: arbitrary; it imposes inconsistent standards between countries; it fails to reflect differences in inflation between rural and urban areas; it gives much greater weight to the prices of goods brought by richer people in those countries than by poorer people.
David Woodward, author of the report How poor is poor? says:-
“at the $1 a day line, typically between one in twelve and one in six children die before the age of five - mostly from poverty-related causes. Between a third and half of those who survive, however, are malnourished. How can anyone say that people are not poor just because their incomes have risen to this level? It is not having an income less than $1 or $2 a day which is bad, but having an income which is inadequate to allow good health and nutrition, access to education or even survival.”
The report proposes that the World Bank and United Nations adopt a new global measure of poverty. Poverty lines need to be set for each individual country at the income level at which people in that country actually achieve minimum acceptable standards of; child survival, health, nutrition, education, water and housing. The new approach is being called a “Rights Based Poverty Line”. Analysis shows that setting a standard of 30 infant deaths per 1,000 live births gives rise to a wide range of poverty lines in different countries: 77 cents in Nicaragua, $2.14 in Egypt, $3.16 in urban India (but more than $3.32 in rural India), $5.17 in South Africa, $6.84 in Bolivia and $7.21 in Senegal. These differences reflect differences between countries in terms of disease, living conditions, access to education and health services.
The report concludes: “Ultimately, however, improvements in our understanding and measurement of poverty will serve little purpose if they do not lead us to the next step – effective action, not merely for poverty reduction, but for a permanent eradication of the blight of poverty in a meaningful sense.”
This of course can only be achieved according to the World Socialist Movement by the establishment of socialism - it is a task that capitalism is unable to fulfil. The fact is that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to serve the common good. What is required is not tinkering through definitions and legislation or taxes, but a revolution in the basis of society which would make the productive resources of the world the common heritage of all humanity instead of the exclusive property of individuals, corporations and governments. In the process of labour the working class are exploited. Here is the source of their problems – their poverty, their degradation, the ceaseless pressures of insecurity which distort their lives. Here is the source of bad housing, of worry, of misery and sickness. The world’s working people must seize the opportunity to end poverty — not by trying to reform an economic system that cannot be reformed but by abolishing it.
The report proposes that the World Bank and United Nations adopt a new global measure of poverty. Poverty lines need to be set for each individual country at the income level at which people in that country actually achieve minimum acceptable standards of; child survival, health, nutrition, education, water and housing. The new approach is being called a “Rights Based Poverty Line”. Analysis shows that setting a standard of 30 infant deaths per 1,000 live births gives rise to a wide range of poverty lines in different countries: 77 cents in Nicaragua, $2.14 in Egypt, $3.16 in urban India (but more than $3.32 in rural India), $5.17 in South Africa, $6.84 in Bolivia and $7.21 in Senegal. These differences reflect differences between countries in terms of disease, living conditions, access to education and health services.
The report concludes: “Ultimately, however, improvements in our understanding and measurement of poverty will serve little purpose if they do not lead us to the next step – effective action, not merely for poverty reduction, but for a permanent eradication of the blight of poverty in a meaningful sense.”
This of course can only be achieved according to the World Socialist Movement by the establishment of socialism - it is a task that capitalism is unable to fulfil. The fact is that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to serve the common good. What is required is not tinkering through definitions and legislation or taxes, but a revolution in the basis of society which would make the productive resources of the world the common heritage of all humanity instead of the exclusive property of individuals, corporations and governments. In the process of labour the working class are exploited. Here is the source of their problems – their poverty, their degradation, the ceaseless pressures of insecurity which distort their lives. Here is the source of bad housing, of worry, of misery and sickness. The world’s working people must seize the opportunity to end poverty — not by trying to reform an economic system that cannot be reformed but by abolishing it.
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