The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions

by Jason Hickel

And that’s according to the lowest possible poverty line. In reality, the picture is even worse. The standard poverty measure counts the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day. But in many global South countries a dollar a day is simply not adequate for human existence, to say nothing of human dignity. Many scholars are now saying that people need about four times that in order to have a decent shot at surviving until their fifth birthday, having enough food to eat and reaching normal life expectancy.7 So what would happen if we measured global poverty at this more realistic level? We would see a total poverty headcount of about 4.3 billion people. That’s more than four times what the United Nations would have us believe, and more than 60 per cent of humanity. We would also see that poverty has become worse over time, with more than 1 billion people added to the ranks of the poor since 1981.