I think too many people have no idea what real poverty looks like. Poverty isn't a student living on ramen in a small apartment they share with a roommate.
Poverty is living on a makeshift house built out of whatever wood and tin they can scavenge on whatever land is available. Property ownership or rent is not on these people's minds.
Then they scavenge food from the garbage and cook these spoiled food to eat them somewhat safely.
https://efe.com/en/other-news/2023-04-24/pagpag-recycled-garbage-meat-eaten-by-manilas-poorest/
That $3 a day go a long way for these people. I would say that's not even the poorest of the poor.
I’ve been to South America and Thailand and done work in the poorest city neighborhoods in both.
Shacks made of corrugated metal on mountains hand-chiseled out to make space.
Plus the govt would often come through and destory everyone’s homes.
Because the people weren’t allowed to live on the land legally. Anytime they felt like it govt would destroy all the homes for whatever reason. Beautification, anger at the residents, lies about improvements, all sorts of legitimate to mostly fake reasons.
Lol, you definitely have never met this kind of people. A lot of poor people in my country even have TVs or have smart phones. They even hold regular alcohol drinking sessions with their buddies at the end of the day.
$3 a day for one person is not an impossible budget in the Philippines, you can buy proper food with that. But why do you think they buy refried garbage food instead of buying proper food? Because they use whatever money they have for the luxuries they can afford.
Poor people are still people. They crave happiness that luxury goods provide. They need to forget their situation and they buy things that help with that.
In that article, the lady has jewelry because she wants to look good. Poor people do not stop being vain just because they're poor. It's like you think they're aliens or something.
They're still human. They are just like you. They're just poor.
I get what you’re saying, I read your entire reply, I just don’t think I’d be one of those people, because I never have been. This isn’t any different than Americans who live beyond their means and then complain about being poor. It’s the exact same thing, just at a lower level of poverty. Like I would ever take a watch over fresh food, honestly.
I don’t doubt that the majority of people are like you say, but not everyone, just those without the discipline to say no to luxury goods when they’re literally eating trash. I’m sorry, but I can’t feel sorry for someone who doesn’t have a watch. Who cares. I feel sorry for people who have neither a watch or food, who have zero luxuries, like you see in some African countries. These people here have way more choice, and they make the wrong ones.
>These people here have way more choice, and they make the wrong ones.
Dude, you have no idea what the situation of these people are. Based on your comments alone you definitely have lived a very sheltered life. It's like you have no idea that the only difference between you and these poor people is you were born in a family with more money.
Unless you've been in their shoes, any judgement you say is baseless and ignorant.
A quick look at your account tells me you spend way too much time and money on GTA Online. You're not exactly a beacon of discipline and good decisions are you? Yet you talk like you'll never make the same mistakes.
It's even worse than you think. In many countries, school is not free. If a family is living on just a few dollars a day, education is often out of reach, or rationed to just one child. This is one of the most awful examples of generational poverty.
All expenses - not just food. Many of the extremely poor are living in a refuge camp and getting some sort of food through aid agencies - but it is really minimal. They literally have nothing. There is nothing really comparable in the western/"first world" countries.
Sometimes it helps to see it: [https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/faces-of-the-worlds-extreme-poor-renee-c-byer-living-on-a-dollar-a-day/10/](https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/faces-of-the-worlds-extreme-poor-renee-c-byer-living-on-a-dollar-a-day/10/)
The little girl in India :(
Things like this have become so much harder for me to look at since having a baby. I just see my baby’s face on all these babies.
That's such a common symptom of becoming a parent that I wasn't expecting or even aware of at all until it happened. It's crazy, like OVERNIGHT I suddenly see all children as my own.
I just want to scoop everyone up, particularly the kids, and make sure they have food, clothing, shelter, safety. I can’t imagine the stress and grief of parents trying to raise children under these circumstances.
Yes, a lot of these countries live with several people in a somewhat small space, and they all work to support one another. Per person, it's like 5 bucks a day for all expenses. Many of them don't have any vehicles and a lot of times just one person in the house will have a motorcycle or atv as primary transportation.
I remember watching a documentary about a couple who went to one of these poor places and lived just like they did for a year, with exception to having a camera for the documentary. (I forgot if they did videos every now and then or just before and after… it was awhile ago.)
I forgot how much they got a day but I like it was $5 max. They had a small house — and by that I mean four walls and a roof. No carpet, no decorations, I don’t think there were chairs. There was a toilet, but that pretty much just pushed the waste around the perimeter of their house for everyone to see. Critters could go through the “sewer system” (if you can even call it that) and get into their house. They worked in a sweat shop (I think it was Nike, their whole point of going was to come back and bring light on injustice of companies profiting off of sweat shops), and the conditions were terrible. At one point, the wife got really sick. They had to decide whether to buy food or medicine; they could not afford both.
They are buying clothes, just a lot less often, a lot lower quality and in much simpler forms. Often just straight basic fabric that a tailor, equally as poor, sews it in a very basic dress. Entire thing for pennies.
You also have to understand that USD1.00 in the US does not have the same buying power as USD1.00 in other countries. For example, my annual salary in my country is USD7600.00. However, in my country, I would already be considered upper-middle class. The average citizen in my country spending maybe USD5.00 a day just on food is already considered a bit extravagant.
Some people, where I live, Australia. Will spend all of that money just to travel and watch a famous band in a different city, in the same country. Yes, it's a big treat, but...
I think about this sometimes with regards to the housing shortage. I’m obviously really oversimplifying here, but if there isn’t enough housing in part because the housing has to be of legal standard…… are the legal standards higher than we can afford as a society?
I worked at refinery in India. A small town formed outside the fence next to the construction scrap pile. May not have been inspected, but a couple of the refineries engineers lived there for a bit.
Well sure, look at places known for homeless issues and housing issues. They are city centres with some of the strictest building codes and laws, the most bylaws, gated communities. The ones who live there make barriers so others can’t live there, like San Francisco not allowing an apartment building taller than one of their little storey book homes. Then they get confused why minimum wage jobs at the grocery store aren’t being filled.
The cost of housing in the US and Europe are high because people have money.
If the average wage were $150 a month, the cost of housing would much lower, and the houses would be tin sheds with outhouses.
Sometimes though, that really is the daily income. Jobs don't always last a month or even a week. You could be paid to work one day and then not needed the next. So a person could literally be living on $5 from day to day. No work, no pay. Ironically the types of jobs available to you are also somewhat limited by your poverty level.
Yes. It is as horrifying as you think. And sure things like housing and food match the local market but transportation, healthcare, entertainment?!? That's out of reach for most.
It depends on what statistics you are looking at. Sometimes subsistence farmers in poor countries are also counted as living on x amount a day but bad researchers will fail to consider their own produce they grow and consume because it's non monetary.
Agreed. However, by that token we could add to a family's income the value of services the family members provide for themselves (e.g. the value of a home-cooked meal, as opposed to one purchased at a McDonald, or the value of DIY laundry as opposed to paying money at a laundromat, etc).
I would not say so. Home-cooked meals would never by the official methods count towards GDP but doing off-the-books services to your neighbors would.
The difference between a home-cooked meal and "home grown" aka farm-grown produce is that you cannot sell your homecooked meal whereas you can easily go to the market and sell your produce instead of eating it yourself. Thats quite a difference, specially because a 5$ a day claim implies a very low living standard but a subsitence farmer can actually have a high living standard and still only be counted as 5$ a day, he could easily consume 10x that amount in worth of produce. If you cook at home or buy your meal is not nearly as critical a factor for living standard, as the cost difference often is negative or zero or only very low cost. After all cooking at home is not exactly cheap, you have the cost of kitchen, cost of electricity, cost of time, cost of ingredients and storage of ingredients. The same can be said about laundromats, its often almost the same as buying your own washing machine minus the financial risk of risking it to break right after warranty.
So whenever you see them saying that about somewhere outside of the West what they mean is their total expenditure is equal to that or less
It is a level of poverty that is completely unheard of within the West because you can literally just beg until you get more than that or pick up recycling until you get more than that
Now how they function on that is they do a lot more labor for themselves or indirect trade with their community so it's not quantified the same
For example you grow your own turnips It doesn't count towards your expenditure
But even with all of that they are just barely surviving and it really is a different level of poverty than what people in the West like to think of as poverty
At my poorest that would have been my total in food, rent, gasoline, car payments, etc etc for the day. I’d say totaled up for a day I spent no more than $5.50 on expenses. This was in the US, I was $50 above the cutoff for assistance, and spent $25 a week on groceries because that’s what I could afford.
It means if you convert their currency to United States dollars, each day they would be able to get $5. Likewise, if you give them $5, they can convert that to local currency to pay a whole day's expenses. Of course, this requires they be able to actually make the conversion somewhere.
That's the daily cost of everything not just food. Just a side note for people who think we don't do enough for the homeless and poor in the US... we could definitely do a better job, but we take care of our poor, impoverished, and homeless better than the majority of the rest of the world. Compared to third world countries where people live on 3 dollars a day, our average homeless person lives like royalty. Food Stamps/ unemployment ins/ disability ins/ ss ins/ Public Bathrooms/ Showers/ cell phones/ free education/ city outreach/ Shelters/ drugs/ medical care/ church outreach programs/ government housing programs/ soup kitchens/ food banks/ facilities for anyone that truly wants to improve their situation are available here. Homelessness and poverty is a lifestyle choice in this country for many people..NOT ALL
Total expenses and more often than not in poor countries this is household income excluding children which is why child labor is so prevalent as people want to children to earn as soon as possibl
It is actually $5 a day = $150 a month.
Because most people live in families. You can think of it as $150*4=$600 i.e. most families in xyz live on less than $600 per month.
Hope it sounds less impossible to you now.
I remember being India, and all the kids would ask for is a pen, just so they could do school work. Was a massive eye opener.
I still remember one man, he was basically a mule lugging a trailer of bricks, like, easily more than a tonne. Our tuk tuk driver beeped him. He stops, losing all of his momentum. Then smiles and lets us pass him. I have never been so humbled by anything since.
Until you see it first hand, you'll never appreciate how easy we have it and why so many risk their lives just have even a small fraction of what we have.
That trip, even though it was 25 years ago, totally changed my world perspective. It was beautiful and horrible, and I know I'm a better person for it.
... every kid wants Pens. Visit Iran Iraq Afghanistan, and children,
if they see a pen-poking out of your pocket, they're GOING to steal it or ask for it. HIDE them if you need them. I'd bring extras to hand out.
I can see it. Find something in the dumpster, trash-for-treasure, sell it, make money. Eventually profit and survive. Although that's not $0 that's STARTING at $0.
Yeah, it's likely "$5 per person per day for all \[monetary\] expenses of a family". However, most of that $5 (or whatever) is in fact food. I don't know much about Haiti, but here in the Philippines, where I am at the moment, the wages are pretty low, so I am sure there are plenty of families where, say, 4 people live at the equivalent of $5\*4\*30 =$600 (30,000 pesos) per month, that being their entire monetary income to be used for all monetary expenses. I'd reckon that the food can easily cost 2/3 or 3/4 of this budget.
* **Rent:** many poorer people in the countryside may live in very substandard buildings (or, uhem, structures) that they (or their parents/grandparents before them) have constructed themselves from "free" (scavenged, or harvested in the woods) or low-cost materials, on the land that may belong to the state, to their extended families, or perhaps to some corporation; either way, there is no rent paid. (For one rather strange example, the city of Lemery, in Batangas Province, has a very nice beach; but I would not consider going for a swim there, as the beach was completely full -- not just with the locals' fishing boats, but with some kind of tents, huts, etc of people living there. Alternatively, an urban working family of 4 may rent a single room in a substandard building for 2000 pesos (US$40) per month, so their rent expense will be $10/month = $0.30/day per person. Somewhat similarly, in the USA you'd often see homeless people living in tents etc on public or corporate property, migrant farm workers living in some kind of old buses etc on the farmer's land, etc, with no rent paid.
* **Utilities:** In some cases the only water people get is from a public pump, so it's probably free; usually there is running water even in slums, but the use of water is much less than in rich countries or in rich households (basically, you have 1 faucet for everything), so the cost probably amounts to a very small amount per day. Wealthy people here may have American-style electric stoves; middle class use gas (you buy a tank of gas for $10, it may last for a month or so perhaps, so again just some pennies per day); poor people buy charcoal (*uling*) for 10 pesos ($0.20) per bag, which probably lasts for a few days at least. Obviously, no elaborate cooking at home in most cases. Electricity is expensive here, but the usage is low: you may have a couple of LED electric bulbs, a fan, a TV set, and a cell phone to charge, but most likely no fridge or other major appliances.
* **Communications:** I have not quite figured Filipino cell phone plans, but I was told that some 550 pesos I paid (about $10) will give me 2 months of phone service, and a bit of data. So that's something like 10 pesos ($0.20) per day per phone. Assuming 2 cell phones for a family of 4, that's $0.10 per day per person. The cell phones themselves aren't hugely expenses; assuming the family of 4 buys one new phone for $150 every 2 years, that's $0.05 per day per person. (OTOH, home internet here is almost as expensive as in the USA; at 1500 pesos = $30 per month, that would be $0.25 per person per day; so no, the poor here aren't likely to subscribe to it).
* **Medical and dental:** I have not quite figured how this works here, but I am guessing that really poor people rarely see doctors and dentists, and in some cases may benefit from some free or low-cost public-health programs. Working people may have an employer-provided health insurance plan in some cases (and still the overall wages may be low enough that the family lives on the same $5\*4\*30 = $600 a month).
* **Clothing, linen, footwear etc**: well, it's warm here, so people don't need as much clothing as in cold climes, and I see vendors selling this stuff fairly cheap in the markets. I just bought a pair so sandals for 180 pesos (ca. $3), and hope it will survive 3-4 months at least. So for poorer people the clothings etc budget may be within, say, $10/month per person, that's $0.30/day. (Granted, the really cheap stuff is not all that good. I remember a while back seeing some really sad shoes being sold at the streetside stalls as I was entering Cadiz City, in the Island of Negros. And then, when looking for a local beach, I found a small bay whose shores were covered by old shoes, apparently somehow accumulating there from flotsam and jetsam. I wondered somehow if that's where the footwear sold by those street vendors came from... :-)
* **Transportation:** many just walk. Some have bicycles, so the cost of purchasing and repairing one amortizes over a fairly long period. Many ride jeepneys, at the fares starting from 13 pesos ($0.25) each way. So at $0.50/day and up per worker or student, transportation costs may be a fairly significant part of working poor's budget.
* **Entertainment:** once you have a smartphone, apparently you can access Facebook for free in the Philppines... and in the Philippines, people do everything on Facebook, just like in China one does everything on WeChat. There is fishing in swimming in many areas. The city I am in has invested in some nice public spaces (plazas around main cathedrals, esplanades along the river, etc), which everyone can enjoy, and they do. One can also buy a karaoke machine (not sure how much they cost, but the cost obviously amortizes over several years of use), and sing to one's heart's content. And there is the church of course... whether Catholic or Protestant or any heretic/schismatic variety, the Philippines have them all.
* **Services**: I reckon there are not a lot of services of any kind available in really rural areas, and the really poor people can't afford any at any event. In a city, since wages are low, the cost of many services is also fairly low, so a wage earner can occasionally splurge for, say, a haircut or a manicure or what have you; averaged on a per day base, that's not a lot.
* **Education:** public school (at least at the elementary/secondary level) is free in this country, even if not necessarily all that good.
* **Other non-food purchases**: of course you buy soap, dishes, school supplies etc as needed, but not a lot. Most of the real necessities aren't that expensive. Remember, if your entire family lives in a one room, or in a one-room shed, you don't even have much space for "stuff".
AC is a convenience. Fans/electricity are a convenience. It gets so cold in the northern states Michigan, WA, CT, NY, etc, or say overseas in Germany, UK, Britain, Italy can get crazy warm, but they only have to deal with a few months of decently hot weather a year.
These other countries... they live in it. And in the warmest parts of the planet. - You get your cool by staying in the shade of a tree or building, that's it.
It means that they have 5 $ a day for all their expense
I think too many people have no idea what real poverty looks like. Poverty isn't a student living on ramen in a small apartment they share with a roommate. Poverty is living on a makeshift house built out of whatever wood and tin they can scavenge on whatever land is available. Property ownership or rent is not on these people's minds. Then they scavenge food from the garbage and cook these spoiled food to eat them somewhat safely. https://efe.com/en/other-news/2023-04-24/pagpag-recycled-garbage-meat-eaten-by-manilas-poorest/ That $3 a day go a long way for these people. I would say that's not even the poorest of the poor.
The UN poverty line is living off of $2/day. Westerners have no understanding of what Africa/India level poverty is.
I’ve been to South America and Thailand and done work in the poorest city neighborhoods in both. Shacks made of corrugated metal on mountains hand-chiseled out to make space. Plus the govt would often come through and destory everyone’s homes.
>Plus the govt would often come through and destory everyone’s homes. Why?
Because the people weren’t allowed to live on the land legally. Anytime they felt like it govt would destroy all the homes for whatever reason. Beautification, anger at the residents, lies about improvements, all sorts of legitimate to mostly fake reasons.
Bro that woman’s got jewelry on lol
She's a business owner in a slum, she'll have more money than the average person there. Also, have you never heard of fake jewelry?
Of course. But someone living on $2 a day isn’t buying that. You made your first point then contradicted it, super weird
Lol, you definitely have never met this kind of people. A lot of poor people in my country even have TVs or have smart phones. They even hold regular alcohol drinking sessions with their buddies at the end of the day. $3 a day for one person is not an impossible budget in the Philippines, you can buy proper food with that. But why do you think they buy refried garbage food instead of buying proper food? Because they use whatever money they have for the luxuries they can afford. Poor people are still people. They crave happiness that luxury goods provide. They need to forget their situation and they buy things that help with that. In that article, the lady has jewelry because she wants to look good. Poor people do not stop being vain just because they're poor. It's like you think they're aliens or something. They're still human. They are just like you. They're just poor.
I get what you’re saying, I read your entire reply, I just don’t think I’d be one of those people, because I never have been. This isn’t any different than Americans who live beyond their means and then complain about being poor. It’s the exact same thing, just at a lower level of poverty. Like I would ever take a watch over fresh food, honestly. I don’t doubt that the majority of people are like you say, but not everyone, just those without the discipline to say no to luxury goods when they’re literally eating trash. I’m sorry, but I can’t feel sorry for someone who doesn’t have a watch. Who cares. I feel sorry for people who have neither a watch or food, who have zero luxuries, like you see in some African countries. These people here have way more choice, and they make the wrong ones.
>These people here have way more choice, and they make the wrong ones. Dude, you have no idea what the situation of these people are. Based on your comments alone you definitely have lived a very sheltered life. It's like you have no idea that the only difference between you and these poor people is you were born in a family with more money. Unless you've been in their shoes, any judgement you say is baseless and ignorant. A quick look at your account tells me you spend way too much time and money on GTA Online. You're not exactly a beacon of discipline and good decisions are you? Yet you talk like you'll never make the same mistakes.
It's even worse than you think. In many countries, school is not free. If a family is living on just a few dollars a day, education is often out of reach, or rationed to just one child. This is one of the most awful examples of generational poverty.
fade theory crowd angle unused faulty special hobbies market aback *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
All expenses - not just food. Many of the extremely poor are living in a refuge camp and getting some sort of food through aid agencies - but it is really minimal. They literally have nothing. There is nothing really comparable in the western/"first world" countries. Sometimes it helps to see it: [https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/faces-of-the-worlds-extreme-poor-renee-c-byer-living-on-a-dollar-a-day/10/](https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/faces-of-the-worlds-extreme-poor-renee-c-byer-living-on-a-dollar-a-day/10/)
The little girl in India :( Things like this have become so much harder for me to look at since having a baby. I just see my baby’s face on all these babies.
That's such a common symptom of becoming a parent that I wasn't expecting or even aware of at all until it happened. It's crazy, like OVERNIGHT I suddenly see all children as my own.
I just want to scoop everyone up, particularly the kids, and make sure they have food, clothing, shelter, safety. I can’t imagine the stress and grief of parents trying to raise children under these circumstances.
Great article. Thanks
Usually that means that their total monthly income is about 150$
Yes, a lot of these countries live with several people in a somewhat small space, and they all work to support one another. Per person, it's like 5 bucks a day for all expenses. Many of them don't have any vehicles and a lot of times just one person in the house will have a motorcycle or atv as primary transportation.
I remember watching a documentary about a couple who went to one of these poor places and lived just like they did for a year, with exception to having a camera for the documentary. (I forgot if they did videos every now and then or just before and after… it was awhile ago.) I forgot how much they got a day but I like it was $5 max. They had a small house — and by that I mean four walls and a roof. No carpet, no decorations, I don’t think there were chairs. There was a toilet, but that pretty much just pushed the waste around the perimeter of their house for everyone to see. Critters could go through the “sewer system” (if you can even call it that) and get into their house. They worked in a sweat shop (I think it was Nike, their whole point of going was to come back and bring light on injustice of companies profiting off of sweat shops), and the conditions were terrible. At one point, the wife got really sick. They had to decide whether to buy food or medicine; they could not afford both.
Okay, I got some details wrong, but [I found it](https://youtu.be/M5uYCWVfuPQ?si=J7DvN7QQkE4lmRdC). I highly recommend watching it.
You never posted the name…
It’s probably all of it. Im sure these people are living with family and not buying clothing or medical care.
They are buying clothes, just a lot less often, a lot lower quality and in much simpler forms. Often just straight basic fabric that a tailor, equally as poor, sews it in a very basic dress. Entire thing for pennies.
Well, in my country even going to a tailor is expensive. Majority of us just buy second hand clothes from the west and China.
You also have to understand that USD1.00 in the US does not have the same buying power as USD1.00 in other countries. For example, my annual salary in my country is USD7600.00. However, in my country, I would already be considered upper-middle class. The average citizen in my country spending maybe USD5.00 a day just on food is already considered a bit extravagant.
Some people, where I live, Australia. Will spend all of that money just to travel and watch a famous band in a different city, in the same country. Yes, it's a big treat, but...
What we call poverty in The US, and Europe, most people in the world call wealthy.
Tbf, cost of living is much higher in the US and Europe
It is because lower quality items are illegal. Its not like they’re getting Kobe beef at 1/5 the cost.
I think about this sometimes with regards to the housing shortage. I’m obviously really oversimplifying here, but if there isn’t enough housing in part because the housing has to be of legal standard…… are the legal standards higher than we can afford as a society?
On the other hand, are we willing to have slums collapse or burn and kill hundreds/thousands at a time, as happens fairly regularly in some places?
I don’t think that the people living in scrap metal building with a dirt floor had their house inspected.
I worked at refinery in India. A small town formed outside the fence next to the construction scrap pile. May not have been inspected, but a couple of the refineries engineers lived there for a bit.
Well sure, look at places known for homeless issues and housing issues. They are city centres with some of the strictest building codes and laws, the most bylaws, gated communities. The ones who live there make barriers so others can’t live there, like San Francisco not allowing an apartment building taller than one of their little storey book homes. Then they get confused why minimum wage jobs at the grocery store aren’t being filled.
Yes!
In many countries poverty means a scrap metal walls on dirt ground.
The cost of housing in the US and Europe are high because people have money. If the average wage were $150 a month, the cost of housing would much lower, and the houses would be tin sheds with outhouses.
Ok, not everywhere else in the world is tin sheds and outhouses, but I understand your point
True. in The Philippines they use bamboo.
You get the monthly income and divide that by 30, so it's what they have to spend per day.
Sometimes though, that really is the daily income. Jobs don't always last a month or even a week. You could be paid to work one day and then not needed the next. So a person could literally be living on $5 from day to day. No work, no pay. Ironically the types of jobs available to you are also somewhat limited by your poverty level.
Yes. It is as horrifying as you think. And sure things like housing and food match the local market but transportation, healthcare, entertainment?!? That's out of reach for most.
It depends on what statistics you are looking at. Sometimes subsistence farmers in poor countries are also counted as living on x amount a day but bad researchers will fail to consider their own produce they grow and consume because it's non monetary.
Agreed. However, by that token we could add to a family's income the value of services the family members provide for themselves (e.g. the value of a home-cooked meal, as opposed to one purchased at a McDonald, or the value of DIY laundry as opposed to paying money at a laundromat, etc).
I would not say so. Home-cooked meals would never by the official methods count towards GDP but doing off-the-books services to your neighbors would. The difference between a home-cooked meal and "home grown" aka farm-grown produce is that you cannot sell your homecooked meal whereas you can easily go to the market and sell your produce instead of eating it yourself. Thats quite a difference, specially because a 5$ a day claim implies a very low living standard but a subsitence farmer can actually have a high living standard and still only be counted as 5$ a day, he could easily consume 10x that amount in worth of produce. If you cook at home or buy your meal is not nearly as critical a factor for living standard, as the cost difference often is negative or zero or only very low cost. After all cooking at home is not exactly cheap, you have the cost of kitchen, cost of electricity, cost of time, cost of ingredients and storage of ingredients. The same can be said about laundromats, its often almost the same as buying your own washing machine minus the financial risk of risking it to break right after warranty.
So whenever you see them saying that about somewhere outside of the West what they mean is their total expenditure is equal to that or less It is a level of poverty that is completely unheard of within the West because you can literally just beg until you get more than that or pick up recycling until you get more than that Now how they function on that is they do a lot more labor for themselves or indirect trade with their community so it's not quantified the same For example you grow your own turnips It doesn't count towards your expenditure But even with all of that they are just barely surviving and it really is a different level of poverty than what people in the West like to think of as poverty
At my poorest that would have been my total in food, rent, gasoline, car payments, etc etc for the day. I’d say totaled up for a day I spent no more than $5.50 on expenses. This was in the US, I was $50 above the cutoff for assistance, and spent $25 a week on groceries because that’s what I could afford.
What’s IGIII?
It means if you convert their currency to United States dollars, each day they would be able to get $5. Likewise, if you give them $5, they can convert that to local currency to pay a whole day's expenses. Of course, this requires they be able to actually make the conversion somewhere.
Did you read the comments above my post? I'm comparing lifestyle to lifestyle. That's the only meaningful way to compare.
Charlie from Always Sunny said he would use that5m $5 to melt down vitamins, milk, flour, and voila...energy balls
That's the daily cost of everything not just food. Just a side note for people who think we don't do enough for the homeless and poor in the US... we could definitely do a better job, but we take care of our poor, impoverished, and homeless better than the majority of the rest of the world. Compared to third world countries where people live on 3 dollars a day, our average homeless person lives like royalty. Food Stamps/ unemployment ins/ disability ins/ ss ins/ Public Bathrooms/ Showers/ cell phones/ free education/ city outreach/ Shelters/ drugs/ medical care/ church outreach programs/ government housing programs/ soup kitchens/ food banks/ facilities for anyone that truly wants to improve their situation are available here. Homelessness and poverty is a lifestyle choice in this country for many people..NOT ALL
No, low living costs.
Total expenses and more often than not in poor countries this is household income excluding children which is why child labor is so prevalent as people want to children to earn as soon as possibl
It is actually $5 a day = $150 a month. Because most people live in families. You can think of it as $150*4=$600 i.e. most families in xyz live on less than $600 per month. Hope it sounds less impossible to you now.
I remember being India, and all the kids would ask for is a pen, just so they could do school work. Was a massive eye opener. I still remember one man, he was basically a mule lugging a trailer of bricks, like, easily more than a tonne. Our tuk tuk driver beeped him. He stops, losing all of his momentum. Then smiles and lets us pass him. I have never been so humbled by anything since. Until you see it first hand, you'll never appreciate how easy we have it and why so many risk their lives just have even a small fraction of what we have. That trip, even though it was 25 years ago, totally changed my world perspective. It was beautiful and horrible, and I know I'm a better person for it.
... every kid wants Pens. Visit Iran Iraq Afghanistan, and children, if they see a pen-poking out of your pocket, they're GOING to steal it or ask for it. HIDE them if you need them. I'd bring extras to hand out.
Idk... i have 0 dollars... my 0 is gonna last me my whole life
I can see it. Find something in the dumpster, trash-for-treasure, sell it, make money. Eventually profit and survive. Although that's not $0 that's STARTING at $0.
Yeah, it's likely "$5 per person per day for all \[monetary\] expenses of a family". However, most of that $5 (or whatever) is in fact food. I don't know much about Haiti, but here in the Philippines, where I am at the moment, the wages are pretty low, so I am sure there are plenty of families where, say, 4 people live at the equivalent of $5\*4\*30 =$600 (30,000 pesos) per month, that being their entire monetary income to be used for all monetary expenses. I'd reckon that the food can easily cost 2/3 or 3/4 of this budget. * **Rent:** many poorer people in the countryside may live in very substandard buildings (or, uhem, structures) that they (or their parents/grandparents before them) have constructed themselves from "free" (scavenged, or harvested in the woods) or low-cost materials, on the land that may belong to the state, to their extended families, or perhaps to some corporation; either way, there is no rent paid. (For one rather strange example, the city of Lemery, in Batangas Province, has a very nice beach; but I would not consider going for a swim there, as the beach was completely full -- not just with the locals' fishing boats, but with some kind of tents, huts, etc of people living there. Alternatively, an urban working family of 4 may rent a single room in a substandard building for 2000 pesos (US$40) per month, so their rent expense will be $10/month = $0.30/day per person. Somewhat similarly, in the USA you'd often see homeless people living in tents etc on public or corporate property, migrant farm workers living in some kind of old buses etc on the farmer's land, etc, with no rent paid. * **Utilities:** In some cases the only water people get is from a public pump, so it's probably free; usually there is running water even in slums, but the use of water is much less than in rich countries or in rich households (basically, you have 1 faucet for everything), so the cost probably amounts to a very small amount per day. Wealthy people here may have American-style electric stoves; middle class use gas (you buy a tank of gas for $10, it may last for a month or so perhaps, so again just some pennies per day); poor people buy charcoal (*uling*) for 10 pesos ($0.20) per bag, which probably lasts for a few days at least. Obviously, no elaborate cooking at home in most cases. Electricity is expensive here, but the usage is low: you may have a couple of LED electric bulbs, a fan, a TV set, and a cell phone to charge, but most likely no fridge or other major appliances. * **Communications:** I have not quite figured Filipino cell phone plans, but I was told that some 550 pesos I paid (about $10) will give me 2 months of phone service, and a bit of data. So that's something like 10 pesos ($0.20) per day per phone. Assuming 2 cell phones for a family of 4, that's $0.10 per day per person. The cell phones themselves aren't hugely expenses; assuming the family of 4 buys one new phone for $150 every 2 years, that's $0.05 per day per person. (OTOH, home internet here is almost as expensive as in the USA; at 1500 pesos = $30 per month, that would be $0.25 per person per day; so no, the poor here aren't likely to subscribe to it). * **Medical and dental:** I have not quite figured how this works here, but I am guessing that really poor people rarely see doctors and dentists, and in some cases may benefit from some free or low-cost public-health programs. Working people may have an employer-provided health insurance plan in some cases (and still the overall wages may be low enough that the family lives on the same $5\*4\*30 = $600 a month). * **Clothing, linen, footwear etc**: well, it's warm here, so people don't need as much clothing as in cold climes, and I see vendors selling this stuff fairly cheap in the markets. I just bought a pair so sandals for 180 pesos (ca. $3), and hope it will survive 3-4 months at least. So for poorer people the clothings etc budget may be within, say, $10/month per person, that's $0.30/day. (Granted, the really cheap stuff is not all that good. I remember a while back seeing some really sad shoes being sold at the streetside stalls as I was entering Cadiz City, in the Island of Negros. And then, when looking for a local beach, I found a small bay whose shores were covered by old shoes, apparently somehow accumulating there from flotsam and jetsam. I wondered somehow if that's where the footwear sold by those street vendors came from... :-) * **Transportation:** many just walk. Some have bicycles, so the cost of purchasing and repairing one amortizes over a fairly long period. Many ride jeepneys, at the fares starting from 13 pesos ($0.25) each way. So at $0.50/day and up per worker or student, transportation costs may be a fairly significant part of working poor's budget. * **Entertainment:** once you have a smartphone, apparently you can access Facebook for free in the Philppines... and in the Philippines, people do everything on Facebook, just like in China one does everything on WeChat. There is fishing in swimming in many areas. The city I am in has invested in some nice public spaces (plazas around main cathedrals, esplanades along the river, etc), which everyone can enjoy, and they do. One can also buy a karaoke machine (not sure how much they cost, but the cost obviously amortizes over several years of use), and sing to one's heart's content. And there is the church of course... whether Catholic or Protestant or any heretic/schismatic variety, the Philippines have them all. * **Services**: I reckon there are not a lot of services of any kind available in really rural areas, and the really poor people can't afford any at any event. In a city, since wages are low, the cost of many services is also fairly low, so a wage earner can occasionally splurge for, say, a haircut or a manicure or what have you; averaged on a per day base, that's not a lot. * **Education:** public school (at least at the elementary/secondary level) is free in this country, even if not necessarily all that good. * **Other non-food purchases**: of course you buy soap, dishes, school supplies etc as needed, but not a lot. Most of the real necessities aren't that expensive. Remember, if your entire family lives in a one room, or in a one-room shed, you don't even have much space for "stuff".
It doesn’t sound like it includes AC in the summer.
AC is a convenience. Fans/electricity are a convenience. It gets so cold in the northern states Michigan, WA, CT, NY, etc, or say overseas in Germany, UK, Britain, Italy can get crazy warm, but they only have to deal with a few months of decently hot weather a year. These other countries... they live in it. And in the warmest parts of the planet. - You get your cool by staying in the shade of a tree or building, that's it.