Until fairly recently the majority of humanity lived in what we would now consider extreme poverty. Just two centuries ago, about three-quarters of the world were extremely poor. In the words of the development researcher Michail Moatsos, who painstakingly produced this historical estimate, most people “could not afford a tiny space to live, food that would not induce malnutrition and some minimum heating capacity.” Hunger was widespread, and around the world, for much of human history about half of all children died before reaching adulthood.Today, that picture has changed dramatically. Entire nations have largely left the deep poverty of the past behind.
But poverty is not history. People around the world are still struggling to afford housing, heating, transport and healthy food for themselves and their families. To keep us moving in the right direction, we have to make global poverty more visible by finding a better way to measure it.
This week, the world’s heads of state are gathering in New York City for the annual United Nations General Assembly. The goal at the very top of the U.N.’s sustainable development agenda is to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” Given that all 193 U.N. member countries have pledged to achieve the U.N.’s development goals by 2030, we should expect to hear where the world stands in this critical effort.
What we will hear — this year, as every year — is only half an answer.
The international poverty line, which the U.N. uses to measure global poverty, is very low. It tells us how many people live on less than $2.15 per day. This low poverty line reveals that a large number of people continue to live on extremely little, as the map below shows. Seventy-three percent of people in Mozambique live in extreme poverty; in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is 75 percent. The international poverty line is valuable because it has succeeded in drawing the world’s attention to the extreme poverty of the world’s very poorest people.
But to end poverty in all its forms everywhere, studying this poverty line alone is not enough. Economists have tried offering alternatives, but those can also fall short. For example, one widely used and much-cited framework, known as doughnut economics, aims to define “a safe and just space for humanity to thrive in” and assess whether people have what they need to live “a life of dignity and opportunity.” The line that this framework promotes, however, is just barely higher than the U.N.’s measure of extreme poverty. It posits that just $3.10 per day gives people a chance to live such a life.