Issue #12
Between the Lines: A History of the Most Important Concept in Global Poverty | Anticipating Anticipation | Memory in the age of impunity | +5 Bonus Content | Free Resources - Rocumentaries
View north of Kronborg Castle (circa 1810) by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
Source: Artvee
Est. Reading Time: 7 mins
Finance 💶
Between the Lines: A History of the Most Important Concept in Global Poverty
By the Asterisk Magazine
Annotations
Descriptive map of East End poverty, compiled from school board visitors reports in 1887
Source: Asterisk Magazine
The origins of the poverty line can be traced back to social reformer Charles Booth’s 1887 speech at the Royal Statistical Society where he suggested that those living on less than 18 shillings per week were the very poor; those earning between 18 and 21 shillings were poor, and those earning more were above the line of poverty.
Published in 1901, “Poverty: A Study of Town Life”, Seebohm Rowntree expanded on the poverty line concept by defining a level of income required to achieve “physical efficiency” also known as basic nutritional requirements in the present context. Rowntree set this level at 18 shillings and 10 pence for a family of two adults and two children (adjusting it up or down based on family size) and any family living on less than this would not have the financial means to maintain their health.
Some of the limitations of the poverty line approach:
Since the poverty line is primarily a finance-based metric it narrows the focus of reforms from the general idea of what it is to be a fulfilled human to what can be bought from the market and state.
It involves defining sufficiency. Does sufficiency simply mean meeting minimum nutritional requirements? Does it imply separate poverty lines for men and women?
There may not be too much of a difference between those below the poverty line and a few dollars above it, as ultimately they’re all struggling. Focus on the extreme poverty line alone reduces aid to those countries that do not have a sizeable population that’s extremely poor but are still by and large poor. At the current extreme poverty line ($2.15), estimates suggest that there are 659M people, and at the $3.65 line, there are 1.83B people and at $6.85, there are 3.63B people.
Despite technological advancements and the evolution of statistical concepts, it was still difficult to calculate a global poverty line. The puzzle was solved by Australian economist Martin Ravallion along with his colleagues Gaurav Datt, Dominique van de Walle, and Elaine Chan. Together, they realized that instead of making their own judgment on what constituted sufficient living, they could instead rely on the judgment of poor countries themselves. Then, they would take an average of the poorest countries in the world and consider this to be the global minimum of human sufficiency. The analysis led to the global average poverty line set at around $1 a day.
The dollar-a-day metric spread like wildfire due to the following reasons:
For the first time, there was a direct measure of material well-being of the poorest people on the planet, a much-needed measure for international aid.
It was catchy and easy to remember combined with the fact that people realized that a staggering proportion of the population was living below it.
It’s worth checking out Dollar Street, the brainchild of Anna Rosling Rönnlund, which is a series of photos on how poverty looks like around the globe.
Anticipating Anticipation
By Macro Ops Musings
Annotations
Starlings are small-to-medium-sized birds native to Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as parts of Australia and the islands of the tropical Pacific. They are known for their awe-inspiring and complex formations with hundreds of thousands of birds joining in and moving in unison. This phenomenon is called murmurations. Starlings form these shapes to confuse the predators.
The phenomenon which can be witnessed across species from animals to schools of fish is made possible through scale-free behavioural correlations. The change in the behavioural state of one animal in a group has an impact on the behavioural states of all other animals in the group, regardless of the group's size. In essence, “scale-free correlations provide each animal with an effective perception range much larger than the direct inter-individual interaction range, thus enhancing global response to perturbations.”
The underlying mechanics is this - when a neighbour moves, you move. Tiny Starlings functioning based on a simple rule end up creating a vastly superior “collective mind” that broadens their perception range allowing them to be in a state of flux and respond to threats instantaneously.
Similar to murmurations, the stock market is the sum total of individual investors acting on simple inputs (price, data, narratives) to try and avert danger (lose money on the way down or miss out on the way up).
As stated by the hedge fund tycoon George Soros, markets are reflexive, meaning the act of valuing a stock affects the underlying fundamentals on which they are valued, which in turn affects the participants' perceptions of what their prices should be.
Market movements can be understood through the combined effect of narrative adoption, price trends, and time. When a narrative is widely adopted it drives prices, and if the price trends last for a significant amount of time, then the narrative gets more widely spread. This positive feedback loop triggers the unconscious impulsion herding tendencies of investors and forces them to focus on trending prices while ignoring all other pertinent factors (earnings, cash flows, valuation multiples, margins, etc).
Geopolitics 🌏
Memory in the age of impunity
By Coda
Annotations
From Syria to Sri Lanka to Ukraine, there’s now more evidence than ever of crimes against humanity- oppression, torture, extrajudicial killings, rape, and chemical attacks. But more often than not the evidence barely gets enough attention, let alone consequences. The internet has made it ever so easy to publish across geographic boundaries yet most investigations fail to get the recognition they deserve.
Currently, we are living in the Age of Impunity: A time when state-sponsored terrorists, armed rebels, and mercenaries in conflicts around the world commit atrocities and get away with anything. So, why’s there no civilian uproar, sustained media mentions, and the like?
The language of rights and freedoms was invoked by leaders with ulterior motives to wage unprovoked wars and ended up being tainted by all the ensuing suffering, death, and destruction. This has led to a loss of trust in leaders, governments, and institutions.
A key part of the Chinese and Russian propaganda is that the desire for freedom and the fight for rights leads not to prosperity but to misery and pain. Therefore, promoting dictatorship as a more strong and stable form of governance compared to democracy. And, unfortunately, the world has been tilting more and more towards dictatorship and autocratic regimes.
The story of Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize awardee and CEO of news outlet Rappler shines a beacon of hope. Maria is a journalist who was under attack from the Philippine government for criticizing the extrajudicial murders committed under former President Rodrigo Duterte. When hundreds of Filipino journalists are unlawfully jailed and killed without any hue and cry, what made Maria’s story stand out?
By not narrowing the focus to just the Philippines but also making it about Facebook, the harms of social media, and the lawlessness of digital disinformation, Maria showed the bigger picture. Her work put the spotlight on every election distorted by disinformation, every conflict fueled through digital hate campaigns, and on every woman or minority bullied on social media.
For an individual event to be preserved in memory, it must be supported by a larger narrative in which it fits. In memory games, discrete pieces of information are better remembered when organized within a sequence that contributes to a greater meaning. Similarly, within the realms of media and politics, the impact of a single scene is only significant when placed within a broader narrative.
Bonus 🎁
A must-watch for anyone who wants to know more about the inner workings of a unicorn and how quickly things can change.
Deepavali Sweet Surprise
Source: The Kontinentalist
Learn about what goes into the making and preparation of beloved Deepavali snacks and sweets through this comic of an Indian family in Singapore.
Confessions of a McKinsey Whistleblower
Know about the atrocities committed by McKinsey and what it means to work for a soulless organization.
The discovery of copper
A surprisingly interesting read on the evolution of copper mining and how it’s tied to Steve Jobs.
Why do economists get paid more than sociologists?
A logical and interesting way of unpacking the different factors at play affecting the pay gap.
Free Resources 💡
Rocumentaries: Curated links to the very best documentaries with
200+ awe-inspiring films and series.
For more free resources (180+ websites and tools), please check out Searching (it’s a Notion database that I’ve created).