A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

The data is not robust enough to draw meaningful conclusions about what was happening to people’s livelihoods during the colonial period. (1) By using GDP per capita from 1820-1970 it likely understates the resources that households had at their disposal in comparison to the representation of the later period, and (2) By including total consumption from 1981ff it likely overstates people’s “income” in comparison to the representation of the earlier period. While data on GDP per capita alone is not regarded as a robust way of assessing poverty, it is at least available (if too patchy to be useful) for the whole period.

Source: www.jasonhickel.org