Probably it’s because that’s exactly how this particular metric defines “poverty”. Are you actually surprised to discover that 25% of people have per capita incomes at or below half the median income?

Now, I wonder if that’s still the case today.

- making an international comparison based on data that defines poverty as 50% of median income doesn’t allow us to take into account differing national income levels. It would be interesting to see a comparison that is either normalized to per capita income by country or based on some other poverty measure more closely related to actual purchasing power.

- if I understand correctly you seem to be saying that the relative similarity of market-poverty across different countries shows that the poor are not the principal cause of their own low incomes. Couldn’t you use the same data to argue in a different direction – that whatever differences in “cultural and religious proclivities” exist across these countries, those differences seem to have little influence on actual human behavior as it relates to the causes of poverty. Whether this is true or not I don’t know… I just think that your argument needs more supporting evidence than what you have shown here.

- Although your argument is predicated on the similarity of market poverty levels across countries, I was actually struck by the variation – a factor of almost 2:1. I think before you try to draw conclusions based on the similarity, it would be helpful to understand more clearly what it is that makes, for example, Finland, Spain and Switzerland so much better than their peers.

- While I certainly agree that “simplistic explanations that largely implicate the poor themselves” are incomplete, we have to be equally cautious about adopting simplistic and incomplete arguments in the other direction.

http://www.angrybearblog.com/2012/07/us-trails-at-least-15-oecd-countries-in.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FHzoh+%28Angry+Bear%29

Problem is rational people see them and say, “The American system does not generate fewer poor people” but irrational people see them and say, “See, if we got rid of government, we’d generate fewer poor people.” You might think we could dissuade the irrational by trying this, by eliminating government, but even then they’d find some reason to keep to their irrational beliefs.