posts: 26422

{
    "id": "wp-26422",
    "slug": "untitled-reusable-block-76",
    "content": {
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                        "text": "In recent decades, the share of people in extreme poverty has declined faster than ever before in human history.",
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                "value": [
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                        "text": "A common response to this fact is 'Yes, but this is only because of China.'",
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                "value": [
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                        "text": "Are such remarks true? Is\u00a0the substantial decline in global\u00a0poverty only due to the poverty decline in China?",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "The historical decline of extreme poverty in China",
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                        "text": "First, let us look at the historical evolution of poverty in China. Shown in dark blue is the declining share of the Chinese population living below the International Poverty Line (1.90 int.-$), according to World Bank estimates.",
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                        "text": "In 1981 around 88% of the Chinese population lived in extreme poverty. According to the latest estimates,\u00a0extreme poverty \u2013 measured in the same way \u2013 has declined to below 1% in China.",
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                        "text": "The declining share of people in higher poverty is also shown in this visualization.",
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                    }
                ],
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            {
                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-population-poverty-thresholds?stackMode=relative&country=CHN",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "Comparing a world with and without China",
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                        "text": "The decline from almost every Chinese person living in extreme poverty to almost no Chinese people\u00a0living in extreme poverty is of course an exceptional achievement. But is this the entire story of falling ",
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                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "global",
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                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
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                    {
                        "text": " poverty?",
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                        "text": "To find the answer we recalculated the share of people living in extreme poverty globally and disregarded China entirely \u2013 so that we\u00a0compare a planet with China to a planet without China.{ref}",
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                                "text": "Explanation of how poverty for the world without China was calculated:",
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                            {
                                "text": "In 1981 there were 4.5 billion people in the world. 42% of these were extremely poor. So there were 1.9 billion extremely poor people and 2.6 billion people not in extreme poverty.",
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                        "text": "In the same year \u2013 1981 \u2013 the population of China was 1 billion. Of these 1 billion Chinese 88% were living in extreme poverty. This means that out of all the 1.9 billion extreme poor 0.88 billion were Chinese. Almost half. There were 1.02 billion extreme poor non-Chinese in the world",
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                        "text": "The world population without China in 1981 was 3.5 billion; and of these there were 1.02 billion extreme poor. This is 29%, as shown in the chart.{/ref}",
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                        "text": "The chart shows the results. In blue is the decline of global poverty, in red the decline of poverty excluding China.",
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                ],
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                        "text": "We see that the reduction of global poverty was\u00a0very substantial even when we do not take into account the poverty reduction in China. In 1981 almost one third (29%) of the non-Chinese world population was living in extreme poverty. By 2013 this share had fallen to 12%.",
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                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Extreme poverty declined in China ",
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                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "and",
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                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " in the rest of the world.",
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                    }
                ],
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            },
            {
                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/poverty-decline-without-china",
                "type": "chart",
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                        "text": "What is also interesting to see in the chart\u00a0is that until 2005, the inclusion of China increased the share of the world population living in extreme poverty; but since then,\u00a0this has reversed, and the inclusion of China is now reducing the global poverty headcount ratio. This is because in 2005 China's poverty ratio fell below the world poverty ratio.",
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                ],
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                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Additionally,\u00a0it is of course silly anyway to say 'the decline of global poverty is ",
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                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "only",
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                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " because of China'.\u00a0We care about people \u2013 not about countries, and since ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-cartogram",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "more than every 5th person in the world is Chinese",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ", it is a really\u00a0important achievement for the world that extreme poverty has\u00a0decreased so substantially in China.",
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                    }
                ],
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        ],
        "type": "article",
        "title": "Extreme poverty with and without China",
        "authors": [
            null
        ],
        "dateline": "October 30, 2019",
        "sidebar-toc": false,
        "featured-image": ""
    },
    "createdAt": "2019-10-30T15:09:02.000Z",
    "published": false,
    "updatedAt": "2022-09-22T13:09:00.000Z",
    "revisionId": null,
    "publishedAt": "2019-10-30T15:08:50.000Z",
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    "publicationContext": "listed"
}