Hello, this quiz is very outdated. It would be nice to try this with current data. Try to update it, please. World poverty clock might make a good source: https://worldpoverty.io/index.html
This quiz is on the list of new and reset featured quizzes, so I was surprised to see that it does not offer points. I thought all featured quizzes offered points.
You say it's a booming economy. Interesting timing considering the severe debt problems in companies like Evergrande. From what I see, their economy is most likely a house of cards with the communists running the show. WSJ, Bloomberg and others all talking about potential collapse. https://www.barrons.com/articles/china-evergrande-51633337535?refsec=asia
If you don't even understand that China has abandoned communism as a short-to-mid-term economic policy in the preceding several decades and are still using 1950s Red Scare rhetoric despite that you probably just shouldn't talk about it at all.
yeah, I really expected China to be on here, since they have over a billion people, and China is generally not a very good country to live in, though then again, the government would probably be concealing that king of information.
Knew a lot of people from many of these countries - mostly expat workers I met overseas when I was an expat worker myself. Some refugees and victims of human trafficking, as well. Often they're some of the nicest people you'll meet, despite always being vilified by the locals in whichever community they've settled in.
Visited India and Ethiopia. Had a nice time in the latter.
Just out of curiosity, is there a reason you didn't have a "nice" time in India? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that--there are a lot of things about India that might make it somewhat unpalatable to foreigners, such as the pollution, poor sanitation, or crowdedness. But India also has plenty of absolutely gorgeous historical/cultural/natural attractions, and, as you alluded to, Indians are often very hospitable. I haven't been there myself, but it's on my bucket list (and I've been to Bangladesh which is a pretty similar experience).
I'm guessing Ethiopia has many of those same problems (although poorer and probably less crowded), and I know that you've traveled a lot so you might be more used to stuff like that than the average tourist. I'm just wondering what made the difference between the two.
I didn't say that I didn't have a nice time in India. But I did enjoy my trip to Ethiopia more. If there are things that I didn't particularly like about India it would include the pollution and poor sanitation, the bad infrastructure, and the fact that both my mother and I got deathly ill on the trip thanks for sure in part to the above. But I'm glad I got to go. I'll say this about the country, though: it's definitely not for novice travelers. Everything from securing visas, to arranging transportation, to avoiding hassles and scams once there... I could see dissuading less seasoned travelers from ever traveling anywhere again. There is a very long list of countries I'd advise people go to before India. But if you've been to Bangladesh and survived I'm sure you'd be fine there.
Ethiopia was indeed much less crowded, cleaner, prettier, didn't make me sick, presented fewer hassles and was just overall a better experience. And though some personified hangnail is going to wrongly interpret this as some kind of weird brag or sexism: I also found friendlier, more attractive women there. A lot of this is subjective, and some of it is random or the result of luck, I know. I spent fewer than 3 weeks both places. But... again... my comment above was not actually meant to imply that I had a bad time in India.
One other factor in my positive recollection of Ethiopia may be that, at the time I went to India, I had already spent a very substantial amount of time in Asia, including many years in the Middle East and SouthEast Asia, and there are a lot of similarities between India and places like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Bahrain. On the other hand, I've never visited any other sub-Saharan African country. So it was more of a novelty.
^Yeah, the pollution/sanitation is probably the #1 thing that bothers me about Bangladesh too. And yes, I've heard that it's difficult to get visas to India. My sister tried to get us Indian visas once and the process was long and arduous, and in the end we only got visas for 6 months (we ended up not going due to scheduling disruptions). It seems like their government tries anything it can to keep people from visiting.
Sorry to hear that you got sick--I've heard it happens to a lot of people. I'm glad to hear of your experiences though, and it makes sense.
To Kalbahamut's point - We see a lot of such things mostly coming from travellers on a shoestring budget who get exposed to the underbelly (which ALL the largest cities in the world have). Not surprising that a few people get ill because they really want to experience India in 10 dollars a day. Well for that, you get what you get. Cholera burgers and gastro pizza.
India is not cheap to live in. As a matter of fact, whenever I travel to the US with my family, we ensure that we take minimal luggage and buy both luggage and clothes / electronics etc. from there. Simply because it is so cheap compared to India.
In India, economy hotels start at 80 dollars a night although we have hotels starting at 10 dollars as well. So for those who want to stay at a dodgy hotel, the result will be dodgy as well. Please choose well. India has plenty to offer for everyone. Plus with Uber / Ola - why would anyone have a problem with transportation? And with so much available on the internet??
Absolutely. India is not a cheap country. You can have all the facilities you want, but it comes at a premium. You can't expect to do India, expecting it to be a cheap holiday like Thailand or Indonesia. You're gonna have a bad time otherwise.
As kogatora replied, it is considered extreme poverty when the salary is $1.90 per day or lower, is the figure used by the UN and pretty much every other institution.
This quiz focuses on number of people not percentage so India with only 9% of its billion and a half people tops the list, but countries where most of the population is in extreme poverty are not shown because they don´t have as much total population, like Haiti or Cuba with just over 10 million people, where the income is regularly just below of just above the $1.90 per day line, in the case of Venezuela with 30 million people and over 50% extreme poverty you see it, and salaries are regularly $0.15 per day
Considering some of the countries on here and some of the ones NOT on here, these figures must be politicized. I mean, China, with 1.4 billion people, doesn't even have 7 million that meet the definition?
Well, there are somewhere around 12 million Uyghurs in China. I'm guessing a large percentage of them would be considered living in extreme poverty. It's likely this is simply another case of the CCP fudging their numbers.
Even the ones doing prison labor are still getting paid for it. Even here in the US, generally considered to have the worst prison conditions in the developed world (I know China doesn't quite count as that yet but they're on the threshold), we pay our prisoners more than the extreme poverty threshold for their labor.
Figures from China are notoriously questionable and frequently manipulated for political reasons...there are still PLENTY of very poor people in the western parts of China and many exploited workers from these regions who are working as indentured labour in factories in the east.
While that could be the case, $1.90 per day is very low. A lot of people in China who most would consider "very poor" might not actually fall under this definition of extreme poverty.
The missing Syria surprised me as well at first. But according to wikipedia, the estimated population in 2019 is about 17 million people. To become a part of the quiz, almost half of it should live in extreme poverty, which apparently and thankfully is not the case.
Well, Syria was the only one I missed. I'm not sure how one was supposed to get it, given that it had no data. (But if you're telling me that there are more Syrians than Bangladeshis or Pakistanis living in something called "extreme poverty" - by almost any criteria, I'm calling shenanigans.)
I agree with Malbaby that using percentages rather than total numbers might be a better indicator. Using total numbers it seems to me that countries with higher populations would be more likely to make the list. (But I'm no expert. Maybe someone who is could comment.)
Sure, but most people think of it as just a tiny country so no reason to think it'd be on quiz about population size. Of course, Burundi is so poor and so densely populated that it just makes it onto the quiz anyways.
Unfortunately, there's a lot that needs to be updated on this list. The pandemic and recession have not been very kind to many of these nations. According to World Poverty Clock, India alone has seen its number jump by almost 100 million, making it #1 on the list now.
It's quite possible that the heavy-handed (and ineffective) pandemic response in India caused more misery than all the deaths from Covid everywhere in the world.
Allow me to get on my high horse for a second. When rich people in the western world die, it's a global tragedy. When literally 60 million people in India fall into a state of abject poverty and deprivation no one cares. Of course, the west didn't force India to take the path they did. The government of India has only itself to blame. But it's sad. And no one here in the U.S. even talks about it or cares at all. Instead we focus on trivial "first world" problems. If we spent even 1% of our massive, multi-trillion dollar Covid handouts on foreign aid, it could make a big difference.
I think a lot of people in the West care. I've seen enough poverty in the sub-continent never to want to see any more - but it would also help if India spent some of their $2 billion space program money on their own people (up 46% this pandemic year). There's a hint of a neo-colonial attitude in trying to load the results of their decisions onto the West's conscience.
Oh, yeah, I agree. It's not the West's fault. India's terrible government is to blame for everything.
I just thing it's crazy that the U.S. is willing to spend trillions on Covid, much of it to enable people to not work and stay home watching TV, but yet our government spends almost nothing on humanitarian aid, even when it would do a lot of good.
And most European countries are the same. Canada and Australia are even worse.
I guess the Nordic countries still have decent priorities for the most part.
well, yes but you need a functioning economy to pay aid. Just looked and there's a quiz on this site re foreign aid and the USA is top, with the UK second - while China and Saudi Arabia seem to have forgotten where they left their wallets.
India repudiated UK aid about 10 years ago on the basis that $100s millions was "peanuts" to them. And all the time the Indian super-rich become super-richer while nearly 100 million of their people live in extreme poverty - so it's not just the Indian Govt which should be utterly ashamed.
The lockdown initiated in March 2020 was too long, too harsh and at a very short notice. It kind of worked in 2020 , with lesser that effected deaths. However, the mishandling and utter carelessness of the government in April 2021, led to a second wave , which negated any of the benefits of the first lockdown, and led to an economy shutdown for the second time. All of this combined with the 2016 demonetization, the poor rollout of a unified goods and service tax, and the everlasting corruption that is still present in the lower levels, has significantly reduced the poverty elimination rate.
Although extreme poverty has reduced considerably in the last 30 years , India has lagged behind other countries such as China in reducing poverty. The chief reason behind it is that our manufacturing sector never took off.
The economy until 1991 was completely socialist (It is still majorly socialist today) , all major industries were nationalized, and private capital was virtually nonexistent. Also, since it's independence India's economy has been Agriculture based. Agriculture today still employs 55% !!!! of the population , while making up only 14% of the GDP. This has led to high numbers of disguised unemployment . Even though Agriculture comprises a large portion of govt spending, it has still not modernized due to the refusal of farmers to modernize(any attempt at reform has been unsuccessful due to large protests). This prevent millions of agricultural families from coming out of poverty.
And even after economic liberalization in 1991, setting up industries in India is nightmare with unimaginable amount of corruption and environment regulations(which are very easily waived off for agriculture, as farmers form a large vote bank).
Yay Bangladesh! It makes me happy to see how much progress has been made there.
I know I've shared this article in other places on this site, but I think it's appropriate here as well. It's a good roadmap out of extreme poverty, and I think a lot of the countries on this quiz can learn from Bangladesh.
It has always been my understanding that Burundi, whose citizens make about $700 per YEAR, was the poorest country on earth and it's not even an answer in this quiz(?).
It still could well be. This quiz is based on the most people, rather than the highest percentage. Burundi's population is 11.9 million, with the lowest number on here 9.12m, so Burundi would need to have over 75% of people living in extreme poverty to make this list.
However, looking at the source at World Poverty Clock, it states Burundi as having 9,355,887 people living in extreme poverty - that's 79% of people. Probably should be included in this quiz in which case, you're right Dave!
There is also Turkey. Half of the population in Turkey works for minimum wage and the minimum wage is lower than the hunger limit. Turkey's population is 84 million
Visited India and Ethiopia. Had a nice time in the latter.
I'm guessing Ethiopia has many of those same problems (although poorer and probably less crowded), and I know that you've traveled a lot so you might be more used to stuff like that than the average tourist. I'm just wondering what made the difference between the two.
One other factor in my positive recollection of Ethiopia may be that, at the time I went to India, I had already spent a very substantial amount of time in Asia, including many years in the Middle East and SouthEast Asia, and there are a lot of similarities between India and places like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Bahrain. On the other hand, I've never visited any other sub-Saharan African country. So it was more of a novelty.
Sorry to hear that you got sick--I've heard it happens to a lot of people. I'm glad to hear of your experiences though, and it makes sense.
India is not cheap to live in. As a matter of fact, whenever I travel to the US with my family, we ensure that we take minimal luggage and buy both luggage and clothes / electronics etc. from there. Simply because it is so cheap compared to India.
In India, economy hotels start at 80 dollars a night although we have hotels starting at 10 dollars as well. So for those who want to stay at a dodgy hotel, the result will be dodgy as well. Please choose well. India has plenty to offer for everyone. Plus with Uber / Ola - why would anyone have a problem with transportation? And with so much available on the internet??
This quiz focuses on number of people not percentage so India with only 9% of its billion and a half people tops the list, but countries where most of the population is in extreme poverty are not shown because they don´t have as much total population, like Haiti or Cuba with just over 10 million people, where the income is regularly just below of just above the $1.90 per day line, in the case of Venezuela with 30 million people and over 50% extreme poverty you see it, and salaries are regularly $0.15 per day
It's quite possible that the heavy-handed (and ineffective) pandemic response in India caused more misery than all the deaths from Covid everywhere in the world.
Allow me to get on my high horse for a second. When rich people in the western world die, it's a global tragedy. When literally 60 million people in India fall into a state of abject poverty and deprivation no one cares. Of course, the west didn't force India to take the path they did. The government of India has only itself to blame. But it's sad. And no one here in the U.S. even talks about it or cares at all. Instead we focus on trivial "first world" problems. If we spent even 1% of our massive, multi-trillion dollar Covid handouts on foreign aid, it could make a big difference.
I just thing it's crazy that the U.S. is willing to spend trillions on Covid, much of it to enable people to not work and stay home watching TV, but yet our government spends almost nothing on humanitarian aid, even when it would do a lot of good.
And most European countries are the same. Canada and Australia are even worse.
I guess the Nordic countries still have decent priorities for the most part.
India repudiated UK aid about 10 years ago on the basis that $100s millions was "peanuts" to them. And all the time the Indian super-rich become super-richer while nearly 100 million of their people live in extreme poverty - so it's not just the Indian Govt which should be utterly ashamed.
The economy until 1991 was completely socialist (It is still majorly socialist today) , all major industries were nationalized, and private capital was virtually nonexistent. Also, since it's independence India's economy has been Agriculture based. Agriculture today still employs 55% !!!! of the population , while making up only 14% of the GDP. This has led to high numbers of disguised unemployment . Even though Agriculture comprises a large portion of govt spending, it has still not modernized due to the refusal of farmers to modernize(any attempt at reform has been unsuccessful due to large protests). This prevent millions of agricultural families from coming out of poverty.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=BD
I know I've shared this article in other places on this site, but I think it's appropriate here as well. It's a good roadmap out of extreme poverty, and I think a lot of the countries on this quiz can learn from Bangladesh.