Opinion Today: The world is still poorer than we think

The way we measure global poverty needs an update.

View in browser|nytimes.com September 25, 2024 By Sara Chodosh Ms. Chodosh is a graphics editor in Opinion. Until last week, I had the vague notion that living on $2.15 or less a day — the international poverty line used by the United Nations — was probably a lot easier if you lived in a poor country. It was disturbing to think about how many millions of people had to get by on so little, but at least it was somewhat mitigated by a lower cost of living, right? But then I collaborated with Max Roser, a professor at the University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government and the founder of Our World in Data, on a guest essay about how we measure poverty, and I discovered that I was wrong. That tiny number is already adjusted for countries' differences in their cost of living. So when the United Nations says that a little under one in every 10 people live on $2.15 a day, that means hundreds of millions of people live on the equivalent of what costs $2.15 in the United States. And unfortunately, the problem is larger than that. While the number of people below that line has dropped significantly in the last few decades, that's only half of the story. In his essay, Roser argues that we need a second, higher poverty line if we want to understand the full extent of global poverty. A minority of people now live in extreme poverty, but a vast majority of the world's population is still poor. We risk losing sight of how many people are still struggling to live even on 10 times the international poverty line if we look at only the numbers we currently have. To find out just how widespread poverty still is, click below to read Roser's full argument. It's an eye-opening look at an issue that many of us don't think about enough. Read the guest essay: Illustration by The New York Times. Photograph by Getty Images We Need a New Global Measure for Poverty Eradicating poverty is at the top of the U.N.'s stated goals. But their measure of poverty is only half the story. 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