Watching TV news this morning and some guy was talking about poverty. He said the measure was defined in New Zealand as the households that make less than 60 per cent of the median disposable income. Fine. I did fail school cert maths but one thing I was good at was statistics.. I started thinking.
The median is the middle point in a series. The point that separates the top half from the bottom half.
Now I can understand making a dollar value the 'poverty line' but I don't understand making it a percentage of the median. If the goal is to eradicate 'poverty', then saying 60% less than the median is useless because no matter what you do, there will always be people 60% less than the median. If you increase the dollars those people at the bottom get, then yes, they get more dollars but then the median goes up so there are still the same number of people 60% below the median.
Am I wrong? I did say I failed school cert maths (41 years ago).
The median is the middle point in a series. The point that separates the top half from the bottom half.
Now I can understand making a dollar value the 'poverty line' but I don't understand making it a percentage of the median. If the goal is to eradicate 'poverty', then saying 60% less than the median is useless because no matter what you do, there will always be people 60% less than the median. If you increase the dollars those people at the bottom get, then yes, they get more dollars but then the median goes up so there are still the same number of people 60% below the median.
Am I wrong? I did say I failed school cert maths (41 years ago).
Poverty measure ... doesn't make sense to me
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