Thread by @MaxCRoser

1/ Poverty lines in high-income countries are drawn at about int-$ 30 per day.

I find it extremely unethical that researchers from high-income countries publish articles in which they assess whether people live in a "safe and just space" and use a poverty line of *$5.50 / day*.

2/ These researchers are from the UK, a country where less than 1% of the population live on less than int-$5.50 per day.

Do these researchers actually believe that this is a reasonable assessment of poverty in the UK?

3/ Would these British researchers agree if Boris Johnson would quote their research and declare that only less than 1% of the British population live in poverty?

4/ Here is the paper: nature.com/articles/s4189…

5/ There is a need to use extremely low poverty lines (like $5.50). They focus the attention on the extremeley poor people.

But I find it incomprehensible – despicable really – to use such low poverty lines for the assessment of whether people live in a 'safe and just space'.

6/ Global Poverty is one of the biggest injustices in our world and these authors are glossing over the deep poverty that billions of people live in.

7/ In my view it's an unbelievably large ethical failure of these researchers to publish such writing that minimizes the poverty of others.

It's beyond me why they can write it and also how someone can publish it.

/ If you are interested, here is my text from earlier this year on why we need extremely low poverty lines, but why we should definitely not use these poverty lines in any assessment of whether people live in a 'safe and just space'.

ourworldindata.org/higher-poverty…