According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2016, the median wealth of the world's adults is $2,222, down from $3,248 at the end of 2007.
Based again on Credit Suisse wealth data, in just seven years the world's Gini Coefficient, the most widely accepted measure of inequality, has surged from 88.1 to 92.7.
Global income inequality is down only in relative terms, in the sense that an income boost from $1 to $2 a day is greater in percentage than an income boost from $1,000 to $1,500 a day.
The world poverty threshold was recently increased by the World Bank from $1.25 to $1.90 per day. Numerous sources have recognized the absurdity of this dollar amount for day-to-day survival. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development argues for a $5 minimum; ActionAid says $10; even the World Bank admits that the $1.90 poverty line is "too miserly for middle-income countries," and that"more than 50 percent of the population in IDA [the world's poorest] countries live on less than US $6 a day and are considered at high or moderate risk of relapsing into poverty."
In addition, the poverty threshold has not kept up with inflation. The World Bank set the first poverty threshold to $1.01/day using 1985 purchasing power parity. It eventually raised the threshold to $1.90/day at 2011 purchasing power parity. But with inflation, $1.01 in 1985 is equivalent to $2.10 in 2011. The World Bank's most recent threshold adjustment falls far short of realistic human needs.
Most of the so-called "escape from poverty" has occurred in China, where starting in the 1980s millions of residents of farming communities moved en masse to the cities for jobs in the factories of technology and in service-related positions.
The UN's Millennium Development Goals took advantage of this in the year 2000, calling for a halving of poverty, but backtracking to the year 1990 to include the income gains across China. The UN also revised statistical and caloric standards to ensure that its poverty reduction goals were reached.
China may have pulled millions "out of poverty," but in reality they've gained a few dollars a day while the country has become increasingly unequal in terms of wealth. The new Chinese "middle class" has in many ways gone backwards. According to China Labor Watch, weekly working hours in Apple's factories surpass 60 hours, much of it without compensation. Toy builders labor in the factories 11 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, earning minimum wage, while at night 10 workers share a small dormitory room that may not even have hot showers. In the factories making products for Walmart and Home Depot, there are hundreds of underpaid student workers who labor in workshops that are hot and dusty, with volatile chemicals in the air, but with few health safeguards. Numerous surveys and studies have made it clear that the Chinese people, despite their nation's unparalleled economic growth, are no happier than they were 20 years ago, and have generally experienced a loss of well-being in their daily lives.
https://www.alternet.org/economy/only-capitalists-think-poverty-down
Based again on Credit Suisse wealth data, in just seven years the world's Gini Coefficient, the most widely accepted measure of inequality, has surged from 88.1 to 92.7.
Global income inequality is down only in relative terms, in the sense that an income boost from $1 to $2 a day is greater in percentage than an income boost from $1,000 to $1,500 a day.
The world poverty threshold was recently increased by the World Bank from $1.25 to $1.90 per day. Numerous sources have recognized the absurdity of this dollar amount for day-to-day survival. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development argues for a $5 minimum; ActionAid says $10; even the World Bank admits that the $1.90 poverty line is "too miserly for middle-income countries," and that"more than 50 percent of the population in IDA [the world's poorest] countries live on less than US $6 a day and are considered at high or moderate risk of relapsing into poverty."
In addition, the poverty threshold has not kept up with inflation. The World Bank set the first poverty threshold to $1.01/day using 1985 purchasing power parity. It eventually raised the threshold to $1.90/day at 2011 purchasing power parity. But with inflation, $1.01 in 1985 is equivalent to $2.10 in 2011. The World Bank's most recent threshold adjustment falls far short of realistic human needs.
Most of the so-called "escape from poverty" has occurred in China, where starting in the 1980s millions of residents of farming communities moved en masse to the cities for jobs in the factories of technology and in service-related positions.
The UN's Millennium Development Goals took advantage of this in the year 2000, calling for a halving of poverty, but backtracking to the year 1990 to include the income gains across China. The UN also revised statistical and caloric standards to ensure that its poverty reduction goals were reached.
China may have pulled millions "out of poverty," but in reality they've gained a few dollars a day while the country has become increasingly unequal in terms of wealth. The new Chinese "middle class" has in many ways gone backwards. According to China Labor Watch, weekly working hours in Apple's factories surpass 60 hours, much of it without compensation. Toy builders labor in the factories 11 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, earning minimum wage, while at night 10 workers share a small dormitory room that may not even have hot showers. In the factories making products for Walmart and Home Depot, there are hundreds of underpaid student workers who labor in workshops that are hot and dusty, with volatile chemicals in the air, but with few health safeguards. Numerous surveys and studies have made it clear that the Chinese people, despite their nation's unparalleled economic growth, are no happier than they were 20 years ago, and have generally experienced a loss of well-being in their daily lives.
https://www.alternet.org/economy/only-capitalists-think-poverty-down
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