Have you seen this chart? I certainly have. It floats around on social media a lot. The chart seems to indicate that poor Americans are better off than the average person in most other rich countries. Roughly equal to Canada and France, and better off than Denmark or New Zealand.
When I’ve asked for sources in the past, people usually aren’t sure. They remember downloading it from somewhere, but they can’t recall where.
But I think I found the source: it’s this article from JustFacts. After seeing how they calculated it, I’m skeptical that it provides a good comparison of poor Americans to other countries.
Here’s what the chart does. For most countries, it uses a World Bank measure of consumption per capita. They then convert that to US dollars using PPP adjustments. For the poor in the US, they use a consumption estimate for the bottom 20%…
View original post 573 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments