The World Really Is Getting Richer as Poor Countries Catch Up
Arguments that extreme poverty is on the rise don’t match the data.
Still a ways to go.
Photographer: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images EuropeLast month, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates touched off a high-profile debate about global poverty after tweeting out a graph from the website Our World in Data showing that the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day (adjusting for inflation and price difference between countries) has fallen dramatically. That graph looked something like this:
Anthropologist Jason Hickel, writing in the pages of the Guardian, took exception, disputed the graph and denied Gates’s assertion. Two of Our World in Data’s creators, Joe Hasell and Max Roser, defended their methodology for measuring poverty, which Hickel then criticized more. The debate was well summarized by Dylan Matthews in Vox.