Posted on 03/09/2005 5:38:52 PM PST by Founding Father
March 9, 2005
The Poor May Not Be Getting Richer
But they are living longer, eating better, and learning to read
Ronald Bailey
Wealthier is healthier—and more educated, more equal for women, more electrified, automotive, and computer-literate.
So the conventional wisdom in development economics has long been that to boost the prospects of the world's poor, one needs to boost their incomes. This is still true, but as World Bank economist Charles Kenny points out in a provocative article titled "Why Are We Worried About Income? Nearly Everything that Matters is Converging," income growth does not tell the full story.
Even though some of the world's poorest people are not earning much more than they were two generations ago, they're still living much better than they were. In fact, many quality of life indicators are converging toward levels found in the richer countries.
To illustrate this point, Kenny compares what has happened to life expectancy in Britain and India. The average age span in both countries was 24 years in the 14th century, but Britain then began a gradual rise, and by 1931 its life expectancy was 60.8 years, compared to just 26.8 for its colony. Since then, though, the numbers have begun to converge—by 1999, Indians lived on average to 63, while Brits nudged upward to 77.
One of the main reasons for the gap-closing is the fall of infant mortality. In 1900 Britain, the infant survival rate was 846 per 1,000 births, compared to 655 in India. Today, 992 British infants out of every 1,000 survive, compared to 920 Indians.
Kenny notes that increasing life expectancy correlates with greater caloric intake. "Worldwide, the proportion of the world's population living in countries where per capita food supplies are under 2,200 [calories per day] was 56 percent in the mid-1960s, compared to below 10 percent by the 1990s," Kenny notes. And although he doesn't mention it, one reason is that buying food is a whole lot cheaper than it used to be—the real prices for corn, wheat, and rice have decreased by more than 70 percent since 1900.
Other social indicators, such as literacy rates, are also converging. In 1913, only 9 percent of Indians could read, compared to 96 percent of Britons. Today, 57 percent of Indians and 100 percent of people in the UK are literate. According to Kenny, between 1950 and 1999, global literacy increased from 52 percent to 81 percent of the world. And women have made up much of the gap: Female literacy as a percentage of male literacy has increased from 59 percent in 1970 to 80 percent in 2000.
Kenny also observes that what he calls "non-necessary consumption" has been increasing for the world poorest, too. For example, while the bottom 20 percent and the top 20 percent of the world's population both increased their beer drinking between 1950 and 1990, the bottom quintile's consumption grew five times as fast.
Incomes in the world's poorest countries have been rising slightly over the past 50 years, so perhaps these large improvements demonstrate that small changes in earning power at the lower income levels have dramatic effects? Surely that's been part of the story, but Kenny points out that incomes have been falling since 1950 in several basket-case countries like Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and Bolivia, yet life expectancy, literacy rates and the percentage of kids in primary school have still gone up.
So why is the quality of life for the world's poorest people improving, and in fact converging toward levels found in the richer countries? Because improvements become cheaper over time. Kenny notes: "Broadly, the results suggest that it takes one-tenth the income to achieve the same life expectancy in 1999 as it took in 1870.
Consider the virtuous circle of agricultural improvements, such as the way discovering how to properly use inorganic fertilizers boosted agricultural production, which increased the calories available to families, which in turn meant they didn't need their kids to work the fields full time, thus permitting them to go to school to become literate, which enabled them to more effectively adopt even better farming techniques, and so forth. Literacy makes educating people about the germ theory of disease a lot easier. Once-expensive medicines like penicillin eventually cost only pennies per pill. Although building infrastructure remains relatively expensive, technology can leapfrog entire costly steps, as has been demonstrated by the lightning-fast growth of cellular-telephone adoption from zero to 1.5 billion people.
The world's poor have clearly benefited enormously from spillover knowledge and technologies devised in the rich capitalist countries. But they would be a whole lot better off if their incomes increased, too. For that to happen, institutions like private property and the rule of law must be adopted. Poor countries remain poor largely because the incompetent despots who rule over them keep them that way. Poverty was once humanity's natural state, but today it is almost always man-made.
A rising tide lifts all boats. (duck....couldn't resist)
Living longer is just going to hit me in the pocketbook.
We see regression on this front here in the U.S.: "Eminent domain" takings for the benefit of favored "capitalists".
What do you think getting rich is all about? -- if not living longer, eating better, and learning to read? It's really the end products of living well that societies are after, and not just making more money when the rate of inflation is growing so rapidly because nobody produces any work despite getting paid more and more money. So it takes vastly more money to buy the same amount of goods -- but you have still more money to do so. That's what most of the unionists, lobbyists, analysts, and journalists don't seem to get; that everything is relative to everything else -- and if life is better by fairly obvious measures, it doesn't matter that all the population is not as rich as Warren Buffett, who's biggest thrill in life is eating at a fast-food restaurant. By that measure, most people are as "rich" as Warren Buffett -- because he's not getting any more for his money.
Likewise the argument that WalMart does not provide a few hundred high-paying jobs so nobody can afford to shop at the store -- is missing the point, that a high median of products and services are within the reach of most. That's the bottom line -- and not this constant game of whether the teachers (nurses, pilots, longshoremen, etc.) should get more than everybody else. Quality of life doesn't only equal quantity of income. Information makes the same amount of money go farther than these people manipulated by their union stewards -- who aren't exactly the brightest bulbs in the box. And they in turn are manipulated by somebody further up the pyramid.
So it matters greatly that people are properly informed. That makes the biggest difference in the 21st century future. That's why what is going on in these discussion boards are vitally important to shaping that information culture -- battling the entrenched information control organizations and hierarchies of the past. In the future, sharing information is what gives it value; in the past, hoarding information is what gave people power. In this age of abundant, readily available information, the course the latter has taken is to provide misinformation and disinformation because they can no longer suppress all the information.
These defenders of the old status quo must lie, cheat and steal because they cannot win straight up. They can only manipulate and deceive to stay in the game. That's how you know they are on their way out. Indeed, the paradigm is changing -- and so isolated observations on income, education, information, are only partly right; real change is changing everything simultaneously, and not just piecemeal. You'll notice in every heated discussion, that's the battle taking place. One group has nothing going for it but manipulation and deceit. They're not here to learn -- they're here deliberately to deceive and manipulate. That's what people have to become good at identifying, and because they do, consciousness evolves to a higher level of understanding -- and that is getting richer, better, in immeasurable ways.
You're wrong, Jaysun. They're suffering while they're employer drives their BMW, Lexus or SUV on their backs. We have to throw more money at them. Stop being so conservative!
:) Denote sarcasm.
So, you could live a relatively long life--if you made it past the first year. The low infant mortality rate is wealth unmeasured.
Fascist!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
I love it. It was hilarious! Can you at least invest in wood floors? They can be reclaimed lumber. :)
My response:
Fascist!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
I love it. It was hilarious! Can you at least invest in wood floors? They can be reclaimed lumber. :)
I'm sure you can appreciate this. :)
As long as you're willing to try. I feel so much better now. It's bad enough that we let you employers run roughshod over your employees without at least giving them wood floors. It's a tragedy. :)
:)
The following facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau are taken from various government reports:
Forty-six percent of all poor households own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as "poor" by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television. Over half own two or more color televisions.
Seventy-eight percent of America's poor own a VCR or DVD player;
62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
Seventy-three percent of America's poor own microwave ovens; more than half have a stereo; and one-third have an automatic dishwasher.
As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes that are 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children in America today are, in fact, super-nourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier that the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.
Although the poor are generally well nourished, some poor families do experience hunger--meaning a temporary discomfort due to food shortages. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2002, 13 percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children experienced hunger at some point during the year.8 In most cases, their hunger was short term. Eighty-nine percent of the poor reported that their families had "enough" food to eat,9 while only 2 percent said they "often" did not have enough to eat.10
Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. Although this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, activists, and politicians.
Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all the poor. There is actually a wide range in living conditions among the poor. For example, over a quarter of poor households have cell phones and telephone answering machines, but at the other extreme, approximately one-tenth have no phone at all. While the majority of poor households do not experience significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty obtaining medical care. However, even in households in which such problems do occur, the hardship is generally not severe by historic or international standards.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1796.cfm
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