Living on More Than $2 a Day Doesn’t Qualify As ‘Extreme Poverty’

"Coins" by Tax Credits licensed under CC BY 2.0
Coins” by Tax Credits licensed under CC BY 2.0

Source: Co.Exist

Poverty rates are at an all-time low, according to data from the NYU Development Research Institute that indicated only 10 percent of world population is living in ‘extreme poverty.’

The issue with this evaluation, as the Fast Coexist magazine pointed out, is that the evaluation is looking at today’s population of nearly 7 billion people, compared to years ago, when the planet had perhaps 1 billion. That would mean 700 million people today are considered to be living in “extreme poverty.”

Furthermore, “extreme poverty” is defined as living on $1.90 a day. Thus living on more than two dollars doesn’t qualify for extreme poverty. And in the US, this measurement should come across as more extreme since it is a quickly economically developed country, where two dollars cannot afford much. Yet millions in the US do live under $2 a day.

The magazine reported that according to a “National Poverty Center brief from 2012, ‘about 1.46 million U.S. households with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a given month,” and “about 866,000 households appear to live in extreme poverty across a full calendar quarter.”

Read full story at: Co.Exist

Justice & Poverty, News
Justice & Poverty, News