Comment: Bill Gates is right about poverty, the world really is getting richer
Last month, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates touched off a high-profile debate about global poverty after tweeting out a graph from the website Our World in Data showing that the number of people living on less than $US1.90 a day has fallen dramatically. That graph looked something like this:
According to World Bank statistics, global poverty levels have been dropping at an unprecedented rate.But by Hickel's accounting, this gain in income would represent no reduction in poverty, since $US7.39 a day is still less than his chosen threshold of $US7.40.
This may or may not be true; as Roser and Hasell note, economic historians do try to account for these non-market sources of production. But even if Hickel is right, that would hurt his argument instead of help.The basic story of the Our World in Data graph is that the total number of people in poverty rose steadily from 1820 through 1980 and then began to fall. If Hickel is right, colonialism impoverished the world even more than the graph would suggest.
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