Globalisation

Here is a nice article about the purported statistics from the world bank that claim the ‘world poor’ are getting better off financially. Based on an critique in an academic paper by an economist and a philosopher, the article describes their findings relating to how the World Bank drastically mis-measures ‘poverty’, finding some disturbing paradoxes:

“As the service sector expands in poor nations, the bank’s figures will create the impression that the purchasing power of the poor is increasing, whether or not their real economic circumstances have changed. The same false trend is established by a shift to the service sector in rich nations, as one dollar there will then buy a smaller proportion of the total of available goods and services. The relative purchasing power per dollar of the people of poor nations is increased by this measure, even though their absolute cost of living remains unchanged. When house prices boom in New York, the shanty-dwellers of Lusaka appear to get richer.”

Posted by Ian at May 6, 2003 02:34 PM | TrackBack §