Juggling statistics for poverty


Did the EU fix it's own numbers to wipe out poverty? It certainly seems so.
I haven't taken the time to track down the claims and verify the story, so take this with a grain of salt. If true, it's a pretty damming indictment of banning poverty by legislative fiat.

But even with these limitations, this still leaves us with several Southern European EU member-states, the residents of whose poorest regions -- the South of Italy, for instance, or Extremadura in Spain -- will undoubtedly be especially delighted to learn that the poverty that they experience daily has been "abolished." Thus, for example, according to the EU's own comparative income data (2001 "Laeken indicators"), the median income in Portugal for a single adult is roughly €8,000 per year and for a family of four, just under €17,000. This implies that roughly half of the Portuguese population lives below the monetary threshold of poverty as defined by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Nonetheless, if it has not quite succeeded in "abolishing" poverty yet, the EU has indeed managed to make a remarkably large share of poverty in Europe disappear -- that is, as far as the official statistics are concerned. Thus, the EU statistical office, Eurostat, defines the poverty line -- or rather what it more gingerly describes as "the risk-of-poverty threshold" -- not in absolute terms, as in the US statistics, but rather as 60 percent of the median national income in each country. Thus, for example, the Portuguese "risk-of-poverty" threshold for a family of four gets set at around €10,000.

Given the massive disparities in income among European countries, this convention makes for some interesting results. Whereas, for instance, according to Eurostat, a German family of four is "at risk" of falling into poverty with an annual income of €20,000, a Romanian family of four only "risks" poverty with an income roughly ten times less. (See here for a comparative chart from Eurostat including Germany [DE] and Romania [RO].) In this way, the EU has already eliminated a great deal of poverty in Romania even before the country's formal adhesion to the EU scheduled for 2007. Reason enough for the New York Times to be impressed!

Juggling numbers to redefine "poverty" and then claim "success" certainly doesn't reflect well on any government policies. It also says that the appearance is more important than the reality, which makes me wonder about any other numbers that have been trotted out by the EU politicos and bureaucrats.

I'd go further and say that government doesn't do economic control very well, even if the numbers are goosed.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - July 10, 2006 at 05:00 AM  Tag


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