I would disagree with one point: ”The world is far too poor to end poverty without large growth.”—the article linked does not even consider the global redistribution (non-domestic) possibility, therefore I would argue that this claim does not have enough stand to be made. The only form of the redistribution considered in the linked article is the domestic one.
I think the linked article does consider it but rejects it as unrealistic. See the section, “In this scenario every country that is richer than Denmark reduces average incomes”. A footnote explicitly describes this scenario as “a redistribution of incomes from richer countries to poorer countries.”
Wow! Really? I haven’t read that referred article, and my knowledge of Economics is almost zero. Since Max’s claim here as I understand it (that in order to end poverty, a global redistribution of wealth is not sufficient) is very bold and has practical consequences, I’d like to ask if someone could evaluate gajosfajos’ argument. Is Max Roser really making that unwarranted conclusion?
I suppose it depends on the definition of poverty that you want to use, but if we are talking about the global poverty line, redistribution would easily be adequate. There are individual people alive today with adequate assets.
It’s not the definition used in the linked article (I agree that this is confusing, and I wish it were flagged a bit beter, although I don’t think the choice of definitions itself is unreasonable) — see here:
… I will use Denmark as a benchmark of what it means for poverty to fall ‘substantially’. Using Denmark as a benchmark, we can ask: how equal and rich would countries around the world need to become for global poverty to be similarly low as in Denmark?
Denmark is not the only country with a small share living on less than $30, as the visualization above showed. In Norway and Switzerland an even smaller share of the population (7% and 11%) is living in such poverty. I chose Denmark, where 14% live in poverty, as a benchmark because the country is achieving this low poverty rate despite having a substantially lower average income than Switzerland or Norway.
Considering a scenario in which global poverty declines to the level of poverty in Denmark is a more modest scenario than one that considers an end of global poverty altogether. It is a scenario in which global poverty would fall from 85% to 14% and so it would certainly mean a substantial reduction of poverty.
If you think that my poverty line of $30 per day is too low or too high, or if you want to rely on a different country than Denmark as a benchmark, or if you would prefer a scenario in which no one in the world would remain in poverty, you can follow my methodology and replace my numbers with yours.5 What I want to do in this text is to give an idea of the magnitude of the changes that are necessary to substantially reduce global poverty.
Abstract: The extremely low poverty line that the UN relies on has the advantage that it draws the attention to the very poorest people in the world. It has the disadvantage that it ignores what is happening to the incomes of the 90% of the world population who live above the extreme poverty threshold. The global poverty line that the UN relies on is based on the national poverty lines in the world’s poorest countries. In this article I ask what global poverty looks like if we rely on the notions of poverty that are common in the world’s rich countries – like Denmark, the US, or Germany. Based on the evidence I ask what our aspirations for the future of global poverty reduction might be.
I would disagree with one point:
”The world is far too poor to end poverty without large growth.”—the article linked does not even consider the global redistribution (non-domestic) possibility, therefore I would argue that this claim does not have enough stand to be made. The only form of the redistribution considered in the linked article is the domestic one.
I think the linked article does consider it but rejects it as unrealistic. See the section, “In this scenario every country that is richer than Denmark reduces average incomes”. A footnote explicitly describes this scenario as “a redistribution of incomes from richer countries to poorer countries.”
Wow! Really? I haven’t read that referred article, and my knowledge of Economics is almost zero. Since Max’s claim here as I understand it (that in order to end poverty, a global redistribution of wealth is not sufficient) is very bold and has practical consequences, I’d like to ask if someone could evaluate gajosfajos’ argument. Is Max Roser really making that unwarranted conclusion?
I suppose it depends on the definition of poverty that you want to use, but if we are talking about the global poverty line, redistribution would easily be adequate. There are individual people alive today with adequate assets.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/01/20/the-global-poverty-gap-is-falling-billionaires-could-help-close-it/
It’s not the definition used in the linked article (I agree that this is confusing, and I wish it were flagged a bit beter, although I don’t think the choice of definitions itself is unreasonable) — see here:
And see here for why (I think) this is what Max has gone for: https://ourworldindata.org/higher-poverty-global-line :