About GapCast #4
- With Hans Rosling

To live in "extreme poverty" - with less than 1 dollar a day - means you wake up hungry, you go to bed hungry and you have to use all your resources just to acquire food.

How has the Global Economy effected the income of people across the world?Although the percentage of poverty has gone down, the number of poor people is still very high. Still, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has gone down from around 40 percent 30 years ago to todays number of around 20 percent

The good news is that the eradication of poverty is within human range.

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Frequenty asked question on GapCast #2 and Human Development Trends 2005

A dollar must surely have been worth much more in 1970 due to inflation, does the data take that into account?
Yes, the data has been adjusted for inflation; all incomes are in fixed 1999 prices.

The living costs can differ quite a lot between countries if one uses the exchange rates, does the data take that into account?
Yes, the data is based on the local purchasing power of the local currency, not on the exchange rate value of the currency. Hence all the incomes are in so-called fixed 1999 international prices.

What is the source for the data used in the graph?
The data is based on estimates in a background paper for the Human Development Report 2005:

Dikhanov, Yuri (2005). Trends in global income distribution, 1970-2000, and scenarios for 2015. Human Development Report Office Occasional paper (download here )