Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy

Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by simonh on Thursday September 19, 2019 @07:55AM (#21015338)

I didn't say 100 million, I said hundreds of millions. That's a very cautious low ball though. That's probably the rough scale of people added to the middle class, not just raised out of poverty, in China alone. We don't need to guess what happened to the global population though, they're out there in the world. We can ask them.

Just since 1990, the share of the global population living on less than $1.90 a day has fallen from 44% to about 9.5% in 2015[1]. The graphs there are broken because different studies have used different measures of poverty at different times, but the trends and absolute numbers are clear. Global poverty as a proportion of population is about 1/6th what it was in 1960.

[1]https://www.worldvision.org/sponsorship-news-stories/global-...

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by bakuninsbart on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:05AM (#21015755)

According to official statistics, China's middle class grew from 2.1% (29 million people) in 1999 to 39% (531 million people) in 2013. Average wagegrowth has been 11% between 2001 and 2015.

https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by peteradio on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:13AM (#21015813)

Excellent, that paints a much clearer picture.

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by pessimizer on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:26AM (#21015911)

> in China alone.

More like in China almost entirely. Global capitalist structures take a lot of credit for improving living standards all over the world, but when you look at the numbers, it's really a very dramatic improvement in China, a country that deviates from those structures in significant ways (and is demonized for ir.)

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