The Wealth Of China's Poor, Relatively Speaking
The Martin Varsavsky Blog (subtitled, "blog of an entrepreneur") has an interesting post today, entitled, "Who has the richest poor people in the world?" The blogger gives the following reasons for caring about this question:
Why do I care about these things? Other than the fact that I "just care," as an entrepreneur, I care because the countries with the richest poor are likely to be the countries with the highest internet penetration among all the richest countries and therefore the best for Fon [the blogger's wi-fi] company.
The post uses World Bank statistics it considers "the closest proxy" for determining the answer to its question. These statistics set forth the poorest quintile's (20%) share of each country's total national income or total consumption. The post then notes how China is "much less Communist" than one might believe:
Now looking at the countries in which the majority of the people are poor, like China and India you can see that China Communist China is much less Communist than what it seems when compared to India. The Indian poorest quintile have about twice the share [8.9%] of the national income as the poorest Chinese [in 2001, 4.7%].
Though these statistics fascinate me (I learned my statistics reading the backs of baseball cards), I do not find them all that revealing or important. I do find it interesting that Norway's poorest quintile earn 9.6% of that country's total income and that Latin America contributes the bulk of countries whose poorest quintile earn the lowest percentage of income. I also find it interesting that China is about the same as the United States, both of which, surprisingly, have a considerably "poorer" bottom quintile than India.
But, I think the more important question is not the percentage of total country income earned by the poorest within each country, but rather, their standard of living. This same World Bank site has all sorts of statistics that might measure that, including, computer access, telephone access, all sorts of statistics on malaria, access to education, access to good drinking water, malnourishment, etc. Under most of these other measures, China's poor fare quite well as compared to the poor in other countries, particularly when one factors in China's overall per capita income.
