Poverty Thresholds in Taiwan (as well as S Korea and Japan), Plus US and China

choi

Cindy Sui, Changing Times Force Taiwan to Raise Welfare Spending. BBC, Apr 25, 2013.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22243977

My comment:
(1) Please read FIRST the side bar: Taiwan in context, whcih says:
(a) "The percentage of Taiwanese people living below the poverty line and on welfare - 1.78% - is not only low compared with Western countries, but it is also much smaller than in similarly developed Asian neighbours such as South Korea and Japan, where the figure is around 21%."  paragraph 1
(i) The "figure" following "Japan" is singular and refers to that of Japan only, excluding S Korea.  Upon seeing that, I thought there must be a typo; there is none.
(ii) Poverty Rates and Gaps, in OECD Factbook 2011-2012: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics. OECD, Dec 7, 2011
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sit ... entType=/ns/Chapter,/ns/StatisticalPublication&itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2011-32-en&containerItemId=/content/serial/18147364&accessItemIds=&mimeType=text/html
(definition: "The poverty rate is the ratio of the number of people whose income falls below the poverty line and the total population; the poverty line is here taken as half the median household income")
(iii) In the preceding URL, please click the Excel spreadsheet icon to the right of the text:
S Korea 0.150; Japan 0.157; US 0.173; UK 0.110.

(b) and that "public expenditure on social welfare in South Korea [is] 9% and Japan[] 22%, * * * according to OECD statistics."  paragraph 4

The direct link is
Social Expenditure - Aggregated data. OECD StatExtracts, undated.
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG
(corresponding figues for UK and US in 2012 are 23.9% and 19.4%)

choi

My comment (continued):
(2) US poverty data, which uses a different poverty thresholds than OECD.
(a) Highlights
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/index.html
(Current Population Survey (CPS), 2012 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC): "In 2011, the official poverty rate was 15.0 percent. There were 46.2 million people in poverty")
(b) How the Census Bureau Measures Poverty. undated
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/p ... erview/measure.html
("Following the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Statistical Policy Directive 14, the Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition)
(c) Poverty Thresholds. undated
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/
(Poverty thresholds by Size of Family and Number of Children; in Excel format)

choi

My comment (continued):
(3) Taiwan's data (using both Taiwan's own and OECD's poverty thresholds).
(a) 陳畊麗, 台灣經濟成長、收入 差距與貧窮之分析與 對策. 臺灣經濟論衡, January 2012 pp 46-79, at pp 54-55 and Figure 5
www.cepd.gov.tw/dn.aspx?uid=11121
("主計處(2011)利用家庭收支調查資料,循 OECD 方式(將家庭可支配
所得等值化為每人可支配所得,並採其中位數 50%作為貧窮線),計算 「僅須符合所得條件,毋需經資產審查程序」之台灣貧窮率統計。依此標 準,國內貧窮率明顯高於傳統依《社會救助法》以低收入戶數佔總戶數比 率定義之貧窮率,例如,98 年台灣貧窮率 7.7%為傳統定義 1.35%的 5.7 倍")  

* Footnote 2 of Fig 5 mentions "新版《社會救助法》於 100 年 7 月實施."  The act was revised in 2011 to lower the poverty thresholds--and thus increase number of persons and families to receive aids.

choi

My comment (continued):
(4) China

China Raises Poverty Line by 80 Pct to Benefit Over 100 mln. Xinhua, Nov 29, 2011
http://news.xinhuanet.com/englis ... /29/c_131277041.htm
(from 1,274 yuan in 2010 to 2,300 yuan (362 US dollars); will increase poor people by 128 million, from 26.88 million by the end of 2010; "The sharp increase brings China's poverty line closer to the international standard of 1.25 dollars a day, the standard that was established by the World Bank in 2008")