Monday, September 19, 2011

No measurement of poverty levels in Singapore

Recently I was reading about poverty levels in the US when it struck me whether our government has such information on Singapore. That's when I realised that there is no such information for Singapore. The closest I can find is relative poverty which I roughly linked it to the Gini coefficient.

I find this data to be useful for every country because I believe poverty is subjective, depending on the environment you're living in. This data will tell you the affluence of the population without those big shots up there skewing the curve. This poverty level or poverty line is an absolute value and should take into account inflation and all the other costs that adds up to our living expenditure in Singapore.

With this data available, it will be easier to verify if life is indeed hard in Singapore, or we're suffering from relative poverty, which again I will link it to the Gini coefficient. Seriously, I do not believe Singapore has 0% poverty level, taking into account the number of people seeking help from their MPs on the cost of living. It's better to bring all this out in the open, and take concrete measures to address this issue and to bring this group of people above the poverty lines.

Judging from who you see collecting cardboards and cans, and what you see when you walk past underpasses and even the bottom of expressways, do you think we have 0% below the poverty level?

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