THE World Bank has announced that 400 million more people are poor than it had previously thought. To put it another way: That’s almost half as many again as existing calculations had suggested.
This is obviously disappointing news. Last year, the bank pronounced — to much fanfare — that for the first time in recent history, economic growth had resulted in the number of people living in absolute poverty falling below the one billion level.
Now, drawing on better survey methods, and updating the poverty line from its original $1 a day (which in any case has actually been $1.08 a day for the past few years, although few people noticed) to $1.25, the bank has come up with the new figure of 1.4 billion people who are struggling to survive on the smallest of incomes.
But does this really matter? Isn’t this the numerical equivalent of semantics? If you’re a Zambian who picks crops but can only find work for 30 days a year, does it make any difference to you which on side of a $1.25 poverty line you fall? As the Economist has pointed out, drawing on critiques by Sanjay Reddy at Columbia University, even this new set of data may be inaccurate. So once again, this could be little more than hypothesis. Why should we be taking any notice?
It’s important to be clear that this new number-crunching doesn’t mean that people aren’t getting less poor — other than in Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty levels remain stubbornly high — or even that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are more likely to be missed than they were a week ago. The new calculations are being applied retrospectively to adjust previous figures, so we’re just as on-track, or otherwise, to halving the number of people living in poverty as we were before. It just means there has been a miscount.
But some of my colleagues in the world of development have questioned whether we should consider this new set of figures as having any import. Well, it is of significance. It matters in the same way that it is of consequence that we now know whether or not the earth is flat. We were never in danger of falling off, so being cognisant that the world is round does not make any material difference to our lives. But it is immensely valuable because it helps us understand the nature of the thing. Similarly, arriving at a closer approximation of a poverty count allows us to better understand the magnitude of the problem.
That extra 400 million poor people is greater than the entire population of the US alone. That’s a lot more suffering. They won’t be able to afford to eat properly. They very likely get little protein, surviving instead on a monotonous diet of starchy foods such as porridge, maize or rice. Their children — certainly the girls — will not go to school as they will not be able to afford uniforms. Healthcare will be far out of reach as the fee they will be charged to see a doctor will be totally unaffordable. Their very existence has no leeway or buffer, leaving them intensely vulnerable to shifts in the local economy.
The World Bank’s new data doesn’t bring us closer to fining any answers, of course. But it hammers home that the problem is more acute than previously thought. It makes it more urgent than ever that world leaders deliver on their promises to increase aid, and that developing country governments invest in job creation such as agricultural production, and in health and education. Later this month, a UN summit organized by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attempt to persuade rich countries’ heads of state to commit to specific timetables to ensure the Millennium Development Goals are attained. The jump in the poverty figures underlines just why this is so necessary.
In fact, just as the relevance of examining the number of people living below the poverty line is in doubt, some have questioned whether the MDGs themselves matter. Former World Banker — and now professor of economics at New York University — William Easterly has denounced the goals as wrong-headed, saying they unfairly penalize Africa. But he misses the point: Any attempt to sum what needs to change to lift people out of poverty is bound to be imperfect and a crude tool. But the MDGs are a rallying point, a focus for government and civil society action.
Even if the World Bank needs to re-evaluate its figures in a few years time — and it almost certainly will, because data collection is bound to improve — these best approximations serve at least to remind us that the job of fighting poverty is far from over. Like the Millennium Development Goals, they are a very useful road map in that fight.
