Telling an Old Story with New Maps - Geographic Visualization: Concepts, Tools and Applications - page 88

5.2.17 Living on $1 a day
Living on a dollar a day is a measure intended to define a very severe level of poverty. This map
(Figure 5.19) has been entitled 'The Wretched Dollar' on our website because, as a measure
of poverty, a dollar a day is a wretched definition. To live on US$1 a day or less is below
the sustainability rate; it is not a success if people are living on only just over a dollar a day.
A more reasonable definition of the absolute poverty line is that set by Seebohm Rowntree
Figure 5.19 Territory size shows the proportion of all people living on less than or equal to US$1
in purchasing power parity a day (Worldmapper Map 179)
Text Box 5.18: The Wretched Dollar (up to $ 1 a day)
The first Millennium Development Goal is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the
proportion of people who live on the equivalent of US$1 a day, or less. In 2002, an
estimated 17% of the world population lived on this amount. They lived on less than
or equal to what, to be precise, US$1.08 would have bought in the United States in
1993. In over 20 territories more than a third of the population lives on less than US$1
a day. All but two of these territories are in Africa.
The largest population living on US$1 a day is in Southern Asia, most of whom live
in India.
The mass of the people struggle against the same poverty, flounder about making
the same gestures . . . It is an underdeveloped world, a world inhuman in its
poverty
(Franz Fanon, 1961)