Give or Take

I don't know if it's because the US election is only a week away, but I'm thinking about dysfunction and dystopia, and terrible outcomes.  So I started reading about the effects of the virus on global poverty rates.  Isn't that what you do to allay anxiety?

Here it is, from the IMF, reported by the Brookings Institute:

In 2019, the IMF was predicting a slow decline in global poverty over the next ten years.  Just one year later, that has changed to a rapid growth in the near term, followed by a decline.  Roughly speaking, it will take nine years to return to the level of poverty predicted for this year.

This suggests that the IMF feels that the forces which have been reducing poverty over the last few years will eventually resume their work, and poverty rates will begin coming down again - from a much higher level than expected, due to the economic devastation wrought by the virus.  Even in 2030 - ten years from now - poverty will still be seven tenths of a percent higher than predicted in 2019.  If that doesn't seem like much, let's do some math.

The Google says that the world now contains 7.8 billion people, and that population growth is declining.  Extrapolation from some of these graphs suggests that we can use 0.7%, on average, as the growth rate over the next ten years or so.

Roughly speaking, then, we add 0.7% of 7.8 billion, which is 54,600,000, to the population of the world each year for ten years.  That's 7.8 billion plus 546 million.  Still with me?  We're almost done.

So - again, roughly speaking - we will have around 8,346,000,000 (8.346 billion) people in the world in 2030.  The IMF prediction is that seven percent of us - 584,220,000 - will be poor.  However, according to our graph, without COVID, only 6.3% of us -525,798,000 - would have been poor.

The difference is 58,422,000.  Just under sixty million.  That is people who will be living in the circumstances of poverty ten years from now, just because we let a pandemic get out of control.

These are people who would be making ends meet but will not be, long after the pandemic is gone.  The human cost is staggering - each number is a person without enough to eat, or nowhere to get out of the rain, or nowhere to find a job, or attend a school, or see a doctor, or enjoy a long healthy life. 

And the new world will, starting now, be coping with this increase of poverty every day for more than ten years.  Fifty eight million people.  Give or take.  Unevenly distributed, no doubt.  Again, we're thinking of tipping points.  That's a long time for an emerging economy to address the needs of more people in poverty than they ever expected.  

We know this is going to happen.  It's happening now, and won't stop for a long time.  Will we respond quickly, effectively, compassionately?  

Hard to tell. We're an uncertain people, give or take.