Gathering data on extreme poverty is difficult at the best of times, but it’s doubly harder (or well-nigh impossible) during a pandemic. Such data are typically collected via face-to-face household surveys, but these were put on hold last year.
In a study of 122 national statistical offices carried out in May of 2020, the World Bank found that 69% had completely stopped collecting data via face-to-face surveys, and a further 27% had partly stopped (leaving only 4% that had continued with normal data collection).
We therefore don’t yet have good data on the effect of the pandemic on extreme poverty. However, there are ways of estimating how many people are in poverty, using data from national accounts (i.e., GDP per capita). These data are not collected via face-to-face surveys, so it has still been possible to obtain them during the pandemic.
In order to estimate (or ‘nowcast’) the number of people in poverty, the World Bank takes the last year for which the full income distribution was known, and then shifts it left or right, depending how much GDP per capita grew between that year and the current year. (See the diagram on p.5 here.)
Using this method, World Bank researchers calculate that 97 million people fell into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic. In the chart below, 97 million is equal to the difference between 732 million (the estimated number of people in extreme poverty) and 635 million (the expected number).
This “represents a historically unprecedented increase in global poverty”. Note that the increase was concentrated in the Middle East, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Interestingly, the World Bank projects that there will be 21 million fewer people in extreme poverty in 2021. This represents a year-on-year change of –2.9%, which is approximately the same as the annual declines observed in the years before the pandemic.
This decrease in extreme poverty is somewhat unexpected, given that 2021 has seen some of the largest epidemics in low and middle-income countries. “Would these developments not suggest,” the researchers ask, “that poverty is bound to increase further in 2021?”
So why is poverty projected to decline? The researchers suggest that the lifting of lockdown measures may be a factor. In 2020, many developing countries responded to the pandemic by locking down major parts of their economy.
“These lockdowns decreased incomes and employment, causing an increase in extreme poverty,” say the researchers. Yet in 2021 “the appetite for lockdowns has been smaller”. As a matter of fact, the difference in the policy response between 2020 and 2021 is reflected in the Oxford Blavatnik School’s Stringency Index.
“In May 2020, on average 25 out of 27 low-income countries in OxCGRT had a stringency index value higher than 50, whereas in May 2021, on average 10 low-income countries crossed that threshold.”
Of course, lockdowns may not account for all of the 97 million people pushed into extreme poverty last year. But it’s plausible that they account for some. Even 50 million would be a massive figure to add to the costs side of the ledger.
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Russia/Ukraine Analysis, Are We on the Brink of a World War?
Phase 2 of The Great Reset: War
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/03/23/war-phase-2-of-the-great-reset.aspx
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola
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A society ruined by the Blairites, people who only think of the own virtue signalling (1st to dish out jabs, 1st to offer homes to Ukrainians etc. etc…), the world stage is all that matters. Levelling up, why don’t they say it how it is, levelling down where we are ALL poorer for it.
We are controlled by criminals and occultists who hold the keys to all the media, education, everything we consume, they run it. People need to be reminded that when they see all this evil and horror in this world, they shoudl alwasy be mindful that they are doing this for the benefit of a group of evil, disgusting old men – some of whom rape kids for pleasure. Never forget that.
Of course theres never any shortage of morons who will proudly shout out their fantasies about what they would do to anyone who touches their kids…..then theyre gleefully sending them to the government-corporate-occultist indoctrination and mind control facilities where their offsrping are brainwashed and terrorised into believing they are going to die or kill their relatives based on nothing but lies, then they are guilt tripped into being repeatedly tested with carcinogenic swabs using unvalidated worthless tests that cannot diagnose a disease under any circumstances, theyre muzzled for eight hours a day which can lead to all manner of very serious health issues both physical and psychological which are intrinsically linked, then theyre whipped up into a groupthink hysteria and being injected with what leading lawyers and lifelong high achieving medical professionals describe as a genetic bioweapon. Well done to the parents of Britain, they have really shown us what they are made of, how irretrievably dumbed down and controlled and detached from God and their souls they are, and how they shouldnt be allowed to vote let alone raise children. Its these idiots and their parents and so on that keep going back to repeatedly vote for more of the same, because “it never did me any harm”. Yeah, sure it didnt.
The solution to all of this is that we the resistance become political, start voting for OURSELVES instead of these SCUMBAG TRAITORS in the CONSERVATIVE LABOUR LIBDEM AND GREEN parties, none of which can be trusted, all of which are 100percent contaminated by the kind of diseased mind that populates Satans sh*t pipe aka Westminster. We also demand an absolute overhaul of how votes are counted and all postal and electronic voting methods must be outright banned. Or are we just going to let them continue to rig the voting system as well.
Subversion of the Free World Press – Yuri Bezmenov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQN4c3uN_tA
“We also demand an absolute overhaul of how votes are counted and all postal and electronic voting methods must be outright banned”.
This is abolutely key; if we can’t make them do this then there is no point in voting at all. In certain constituencies the outcome is known well before the count begins, because many of those running it just don’t get this democracy thing at all. The system is becoming as corrupted as the ones they left behind.
Excellent piece. As agree more, thanks
“As long as one was “safe” and able to enjoy one’s splendid isolation with one’s gin, one’s tonic, one’s Netflix, one’s Amazon Prime account and one’s lockdown puppy, what consequence was it that government debt was skyrocketing to 103.7% of GDP? What consequence was it that quantitative easing would inevitably lead to eye-watering levels of inflation? ”
None, because neither of those things are the case. Otherwise Japan would have inflation of a million percent given its ‘debt to GDP ratio’ is over 200%.
When an article starts stating these sort of beliefs that have no basis in fact, then the rest is immediately considered suspect.
What has caused prices to rise is the imposition of bureaucratic restrictions on a free market, the inevitable effects of hysteresis on productive output, plus a reduction in the broad participation rate below 67% for the first time since records began – as older people decide to retire early rather than risk the virus. In other words largely a supply slump.
Of course wages haven’t gone up by as much, so it will stabilise in time – since wages are the source of income necessary to pay the prices. Or we need to put taxes up to remove the excess furlough money that was injected into the economy via a series of badly designed schemes.
That money was saved, and it is the increase in private saving that has caused the government debt. You can’t have government debt without private savings. Savings causes the debt – just as putting £100 in a bank causes the bank to go into debt to you. Eliminate the debt and you eliminate the savings as well.
If those who hold a belief in ‘debt to GDP ratios’ were required to put their pension pots forward as the savings that are to be eliminated along with the ‘debt’ I’d have more time for their arguments.
My savings haven’t gone up, but any tax increases will affect me.
The idea that government debt increased by £400 billion, or whatever the current figure is, because people went and saved an extra £400 billion is beyond moronic.
Zimbabwe must be the richest country on the planet with all those savings.
Your economic argument only works if the UK is a ‘closed box’, it is the opposite, one of the most open economies in the world. Inflation can be caused by other than just production of ‘money’ within the borders of an open economy. Amply demonstrated by the surge in energy prices worldwide most of which happened prior to Ukraine and has little to do with Russian gas. Much more to do with self imposed restraints in Europe and the US under Biden together with economic expansion in the East.
Even just looking at money supply you ignore where those ‘savings’ occur. They have been almost entirely located in increases in asset values since 2008, over the period since then average wages have fallen behind inflation. capital has benefited at the expense of labour. In other words the 1% have enriched themselves enormously at the expense of the 99%. And during covid that was on steroids.
This article is excellent, and points to why the west is sick.
I hesitate to bring Russia into anything at the moment, its so divisive a subject. But its interesting to note that its economy is basically the opposite of the west. It runs a very low debt, a positive balance of trade, is pretty self sufficient in raw materials and food. On the rather warped logic of economic commentators this apparently makes it weak and a bit of a basket case. Perhaps Mr Burke may have disagreed.
“Of course wages haven’t gone up by as much, so it will stabilise in time – since wages are the source of income necessary to pay the prices.”
You ignore that the state itself is the biggest participant in the economy.
This means that as prices rise, the state itself will find itself able to purchase less of everything. Since the state will never allow its access to goods and services to be crimped, it will print the money – driving the next round of inflation, and prices ever higher.
The state itself, as the biggest participant in the economy, is immune (in the short run) to the feedback mechanism you describe, since the state has itself the power to create the means of purchase.
An excellent insight of the moral malaise which curses the West. Those who wish to cause trouble knew what they were doing when they decoupled mankind from God and our Christian foundations. The primary solution is obvious.
‘Nonetheless, at every level of authority fear was played up, even among children. And all for nothing. As became apparent from the experience of Sweden and states in the USA that refused to follow China’s totalitarian example, the sacrifices were futile, the doomsday scenarios false. Those who bore the heaviest cost of governments wanting to be seen to do something were the young and the very poor. Globally around one hundred million more people were made ‘poor or extremely poor’, i.e. reduced to living on less than US$3.20 per day in purchasing power parity terms (Kühn et al. 2021), while the wealth of the 400 richest Americans grew by 40%, or $1.3 trillion. The disease is a respiratory disease, and spiritually we have long been breathing unwholesome air. By means of the virus God has exposed the rottenness of civilisation, in order that he might be justified and prove blameless when he brings it to an end.’
From When the Towers Fall: A Prophecy of What Must Happen Soon
https://wipfandstock.com/9781666735772/when-the-towers-fall/
Laid bare, not laid bear!
Are you the real Annie? I thought I hadn’t seen you in a while. That is just the sort of comment she would make.
I was wondering the same thing. I had begun to notice I haven’t seen dearest Annie in a while, then ‘annieob’ pops up and is on the firm. I do hope it’s her, and if not that Annie is doing well.
Edit: Okay, annieob hasn’t just popped up, she joined in Jan. ’21.
Pardon me, annieob.
The root problem is cowardice.
Our leaders acted like cowards and took the course that was least politically costly for them.
Society acted like cowards and scurried away into their homes rather than think through the risks and the costs and face up to the risks, which, if they cared to look, they would have realised were not so big.
Our society has acted like cowards, by not standing up to self serving teachers unions, whose interests were put ahead of those of children.
And of course, they’ve taught a generation of children that when you face nay risk, small as it maybe, you don’t weight things up, you act like a frightened little mouse and scurry away and shame anyone who has the courage you don’t have.
And here comes the really politically incorrect part. This is the consequence of the relentless feminisation of our society and the devaluation of masculinity. Men are genetically programmed to be bigger risk takers and what society has needed this last couple of years was less risk aversion and more courage.
Personally, I look at the weakness and cowardice of our society, masquerading as virtue, and it disgusts me.
Agree 100%. When you distill it all, cowardice is what remains as the enabler. We needed bravery, and it turned out that all we had were scared sheep.
The root is faith and altruism, not cowardice.
Lockdown is communist, communism is the consistent translation of altruism into politics.
The same is true of fascism and socialism.
An excellent piece, well done!
Look after your children, because one day they’ll be look after you. I fear that they’ll eventually get to wreak vengeance after what we’ve done to them.
I have on a few occasions suggested that we should on a Thursday evening get the nation to bang pots and clap to say that you to the young that have suffered so much when there was no risk to the young.
But this won’t happen — it wasn’t so much that people didn’t want to do it, but that they didn’t understand why they’d want to do it.
As far as the majority are concerned the young were at tremendous risk from covid and their elders actually saved them by telling them to lockdown and getting them to take vaccines.
I’d still like to arrange the one-off ‘Thursday evening’ though — perhaps it might get through to some people that it was the young that made the sacrifice.
“Our”?
Their!
This is not a universal contradiction since there will be some overlap, but consider this:
Many on the hysterical/deranged side of the isle regarding SARS-2/COVID, who were screaming ‘Granny killer’ at those on the calmer side of the isle, and who said little to nothing about children and the effects lockdowns, etc would have on them, are the very same people who, during the ‘Brexit’ debate and after the vote, were writing off Granny and Grandad’s vote, saying they were ‘not the future’ of this nation, and saying it’s all about the children and their future.
Very good point (it’s aisle btw).
Good grief. Heaven knows what I was thinking. Thank you.
Easily done! It doesn’t detract from the essential point – that highlights the double standards at play.
You’re too forgiving, whereas I’ve ordered myself to do 50 press-ups and stay off the internet for the rest of the day!
I suppose that I was as guilty of a Panglossian view as many others. Although a lot of things have changed in every single aspect of British life since I entered the world when we had a King, and many of them I detest with a vengeance, I have always conceded that “things” do indeed change, often for the better, and could be described as “Progress”.
Before 2020, I had reasonable hopes that my descendants might continue to enjoy the fruits of this “Progress” in education, medicine, a generally benevolent State and standards of decency and behaviour, such as those I had come to expect; along with certain freedoms accompanied by responsibilities.
Those expectations have now been shattered beyond any repair, by a malevolent and incompetent State, and its equally vile apparatchiks and myrmidons. Every section, supposedly functioning for the public good (educators, the “media”, medicine, politicians, judiciary, churches, police etc.) has not just failed, but they have now become the enemy of the People. All I see is a life of servitude for the future generations, controlled digitally and electronically by power-mad “elites”. The debts foisted on the young are beyond any excuses, and are yet more fetters.
The inability, or desire not to recognise the damage caused to this and the generations to come is no hypothesis, or aberration. “They” really don’t care.
It’s “adieu, Pangloss”, and “bonjour, Manichaeism”, where the latter’s dark side is in the ascendant.
Whilst not quite old enough to have known a king (though I fear that Charlie boy will soon become one), I too have been horrified by recent events. I always used to be an optimist, but am now certain to end my days as a depressed pessimist (or maybe that should just be called a realist).
Optimism is overrated.
Extra points for ‘myrmidons’, a wonderful word.
I agree totally but now stand accused by my family of being an over the top pessimist. They don’t see a life controlled by passes for this and that as a problem. Leasing a car is a good idea, the electrical supply being controlled centrally is a good idea, being able to track someone using their phone keeps people safe, vaccines are necessary to keep people healthy etc etc. I really don’t know where this group think has come from but I want no part of it.
I agree completely and could see for myself as a teacher and parent the obviously harmful effects on children playing out in realtime. This harm was completely ignored by most adults around me, who seemed to think that it was a ‘good’ experience for children as it allowed them to experience the momentousness and camaraderie of something like a war (without the risk!) But what’s even more astonishing than the ‘moral bankruptcy’ is the ignorance and stupidity that was shown, which is even more surprising given the access to information we all have. This proved to be a very lazy society – happy to receive their marching orders from a handful of sources and terribly afraid to go against the grain. The people who frequent this site weren’t party to some secret hidden information, it was all there in plain sight, just required critical and independent thought.
But we also shouldn’t forget that this was not some organic process resulting from an overreaction. This was a well funded, well planned and powerfully implemented propaganda campaign that was about creating fear, compliance and control for reasons that are not yet completely clear. Let’s get to the bottom of the crime itself and identify the perpetrators before we dissect the moral frailties of society at large.
Hear, hear!
I’m resistant to seeing society as a victim at the hands of a ruthless establishment and media, less so a society like ours that is economically prosperous and with substantial means deployed for education.
A well educated, independently minded, free society shouldn’t allow itself to be easily manipulated.
We clearly don’t have that. We have a lazy, flaccid society that is far more preoccupied with comfort and easy consumption than with any hard work associated with being independent and free.
Worried as I am about the perverse actions of governments, global corporations, media and international institutions like the WEF, what really worries me is a population that is completely unalert, uninterested perhaps even incapable of defending itself against this sort of abuse as long as it is allowed to live in comfort. That is what really worries me.
I am also resistant to this idea, Stewart. But it’s naive to think that some form of central planning wasn’t the trigger.
Yes, lockdown happened because it had popular support, first and foremost.
That popular support came from indoctrination in doomsday cultism.
I was utterly appalled by the behaviour of people especially teachers. The children who suffered will never recover. Because they were the ones who were already struggling, with parents who were not going to help at home. I’d say “a curse on them” … but they took the jab, and that may well come true.
I’ve been utterly appalled by the behaviour (and ignorance) of many teachers ever since I became one. However, when it came to ‘lockdown’ we were much busier and more under pressure than most people realise. Lessons still had to be taught at the usual times, albeit via dystopian technologies, and this meant revising schemes of work and lesson sequencing, which is an awful lot of work. We were also kept completely in the dark about what exam board expectations would be right until the last minute which is stressful. I did witness many teachers perpetuate the sense of danger from the virus, which is unforgivably stupid, but I also saw many examples of teachers going out of their way to support children who were in danger of falling off the radar. In short, I wouldn’t single teachers out as having caused damage. They behaved largely like the rest of society did (i.e stupidly and naively, with the odd exception
)
But you’re right – they overwhelmingly took the jab, and then got really ill ‘with covid’. This was true of all but three teachers at my large comprehensive!! And I saw such a lot of vaccine virtue signalling
I don’t know about anyone else here but I feel so grateful, proud and blessed that my life experiences, brain and general disposition lead me to decline the damn vaccine.
What’s this “our” crap? The moral wretchedness was solidly on the side of government, and was engendered by the filthy foul rotten media, and filthy foul rotten NGOs. The destruction fo our society is no accident, these people have been working towards it for more than a century. The media’s role in lockdown, the environmental hysteria, BLM, now Ukraine etc, is absolutely fundamental. The media is the hypnotist that keeps the masses in line. As an illustration, Canadian surveying shows a perfect correlation between the jabbed, and those supporting intervention in Ukraine – even at the risk of nuclear war. The jabbed are utterly brainwashed, and that is not down to government, or even the WEF, it is down to the skilled and amoral vermin of the media.
Imagine being a “journalist” today, and thinking you were a decent human being
Brill.
‘Our’ is a term commonly used to denote us as a society.
I’m not in this shitty society. I just live close to some people who apparently are.
That’s a self-defeating statement.
https://images.app.goo.gl/EBrrdFR1wVd76LtD7
I was astonished by the idea of closing educational institutions on a whim, and tried to protest. My MSP proved to be one of the most happy to “keep us safe”, by closing children at home. Another politician “comforted” me that children are very resilient. That’s what my Dad used to say, quoting his orphan childhood: he was taught to be sooooo resilient, not eating whole day sometimes. Very happy memories for him. The campaign UsForThem, as amazing and wondrous as it is, proves that if you don’t have giant money supporting you, you can’t really push your agenda. Long story short, I made quite some good enemies trying to push against what was done to kids, and my kid nursery staff, and quite a few parents, hate me :)))
I have felt honoured to be unpopular among the lockdown fanatics of my own acquaintance.
What a wonderful article. Thank you. And whilst I see that so much of this was planned, funded and executed by malign groups, the defence must always be the strength of families and small communities – if those fail, we’re doomed to servitude.
I should like to point out one thing, though:
“I do not claim to know what the “best” government response to the pandemic would have been.”
There was no pandemic. Certainly not any caused by any coronavirus.
Wonderfully put. I believe Burke himself would have approved, and I believe he would have utterly loathed Johnson and his worthless ilk.
Slightly OT, but here’s a story of astonishing cruelty that will make your blood boil. Two boys are forbidden from seeing their dying father because they are unjabbed. They are then ‘permitted’ to see him once after they provide a ‘negative’ test. They plea with staff to be ‘allowed’ to see him again, stating they’ll take as many tests as the hospital would like, and are in no uncertain terms denied access to their dear father. Then their father passes away. We could go over the illogical, irrational, unscientific and arbitrary nature of the whole incident, but right now I am absolutely seething. This is what humanity has become. Whoever sanctioned this needs to be in prison. End of story.
https://youtu.be/t-IlSbbmU-E
I’m afraid that prison is unlikely – TPTB will smply shrug their collectively shoulders and opine “shame, COVID aint it”
I do not condone violence but I believe in our current flaccid society, those that implement these baseless, immoral rules with impunity, will only “get it” when they themselves have something dear to them taken away, permanently.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It’s time we started to hand out stupid prizes.
The Dark and Wizened hand of the WEF guided the world’s leaders to Lockdown. BBB was the outcome and 85% of the sheep bleated.
It is a society shorn of loyalty to anything larger or longer-lasting than the immediate physical existence of its members; a society comprised of individuals in the truest sense, thinking only of their own health and in signalling their own virtue in purportedly “protecting others”.
I see the problem as one of ill-informed, unprincipled selfishness.
Of course, we should stand up for the rights of children – all of us, whether or not we are parents. But they have been treated abominably: used by adults for profit, or to signal virtue to other adults. Look, I’m masking my child! I’m having my child injected!
How many bothered to look for information about the effects of masking or of the injections? That would have taken time they preferred to spend on something else.
Nor were they really thinking of their own health. Thinking takes effort, and there was something else they would rather do.
I accept that there were those who were genuinely frightened and concerned for the safety of people they loved, but I saw very few of them. I saw people concerned for their own safety, and willing to sacrifice their grandchildren and great-grandchildren to medical experimentation if it might prolong their own selfish lives.
Churches closed their doors: appalling examples of pleasing Caesar rather than serving God.
No article can encompass all the reasons for the moral disgrace of the last two years; and Burke (superb orator that he was) is not the example I would have chosen for concern for the interests of the population in general.
He was, however, an excellent example of someone who stood for something other than himself. He bothered; and he believed that he had responsibilities where others were concerned – even nameless others he had never met and would never meet.
We have been encouraged to become self-absorbed, atomised individuals who care only about how we appear to the most visible and powerful of others.
On the contrary, the problem is altruism, the morality of sacrifice and death.
The British public was told specifically to sacrifice for the NHS, the whole disaster flowed from the rejection of reason and the explicit adoption of altruism.
Bruce
Not in my name. Not now, not then, not ever!
Who is this ‘our’ bozo?
I rejected lockdown long ago for numerous reasons.
Everything that has happened since the outcome of the Covid Fear has demonstrate and continues to demonstrate our moral bankruptcy.
He should have credited the philosopher Georgio Agamben for the concept of ‘Bare Life’ especially as Agamben was writing highly sceptical pieces early on in this charade and got called a crackpot for doing so.
And we are still being encouraged to vaccinate 5-16 year olds against Covid to protect adults when these kids are under practically zero risk of suffering from Covid and nobody knows the potential long term effects of the vaccine. What we are beginning to know is that the big pharma companies who are making billions selling them while protected from legal claims for the impact of side effects, is that they are making every effort to conceal those side effects, some of which in some cases have caused heart problems and death.
Didn’t Nietzsche have something to say about the death of God?
I’m not a believer however I have been thoroughly educated by Jordan Petersons efforts to understand the immense value of a moral framework such as that our civilisation was based upon.
We really are living in the ruins of a great civilisation aren’t we.
The buildings we used to build versus the ugly stuff vomited up now is a staggering contrast.
Beauty, honour, truth etc …. so out of favour.
I’m really worried for my Son … I know I’ll cope because I just do …. but he’s white, straight, male and only 19 …. he was really shaken up by the prolonged lockdowns and now he re-enters a world of CRT, debt and cretinous institutions ….