18/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
With the increase in the price of staples and basic services in Third
World countries, S3 or even S4 per day are not enough to find even
adequate food and shelter - never mind for education, health care
and culture. By setting the threshold of absolute poverty at SI per
day, the World Bank has consciously chosen to underestimate the
number of absolute poor. The World Bank argues that poverty is a
marginal phenomenon in the Third World, while in fact the ma] ority
of the population in most Third World countries live below the
threshold of absolute poverty. In Brazil - whose population exceeds
160 million - the prices of basic necessities in 19 9 7 were the same as
in France and Belgium, even though the legal minimum wage was
about SI00 per month. The World Bank estimates that 35 million
Brazilians, or a little more than 20 per cent of the population, live
below the absolute poverty threshold. In point of fact, according to
our calculations, the actual figure is 60 per cent of Brazilians, three
times higher than World Bank estimates. Treating poverty as a
marginal phenomenon is part of an attempt to deny the ruinous
failure of IMF and World Bank-imposed structural adjustment
policies. The egalitarian redistribution of wealth is an inescapable
measure for achieving genuine development. Falsifying statistics on
poverty is one way to deny the urgent need for measures going in
such a direction.
In Eastern European Countries
The UNDP and World Bank have set the poverty threshold at S4 per
day per person. According to the UNDP, 90 per cent of Bulgarians
were living below this threshold in 1997 (Le Monde, 5 March 1997).
In the Russian Federation, workers' real wages were estimated to
beat 70 per cent of their 1991 levels. The ratio of inequality between
the 15 million 'wealthiest' and the 15 million 'poorest' Russians was
9.05 in 1993; one year later it had risen to 16! Official sources say 23
per cent of the Russian population do not have enough to buy the
basic basket of groceries, worth some S33.75 dollars (135,000
roubles) per month. This is hardly surprising since the official
minimum wage is S5.13 (20,500 roubles) per month. In other
words, a person would have to make six times the minimum monthly
wage in order to afford the basic basket of goods.