世行研究报告认为中国贫困人口或增加1.3亿
http://space.englishcn.com/58909/viewspace_21981.html
On the poverty line
May 22nd 2008
From The Economist print edition
Has “a dollar a day” had its day?
1美元1天的国际贫困线终结了吗
IN DECEMBER 2007 the World Bank unveiled the results of the biggest exercise in window shopping in history. Scouts in 146 countries scoured stalls, supermarkets and mail-order catalogues, recording the price of more than 1,000 items, from 500-gram packets of durum spaghetti to low-heeled ladies' shoes. 2007年12月，世界银行公布了历史上最大规模的商品价格调查的结果。该调查涉及到146工人国家的商铺，超市和网上购物目录，记录了1000多种商品的价格，这些商品类别广泛，既有500g包装的意大利粉，也有女士低跟鞋。
本段难点:window shopping本是指只看不买的闲逛，但在此处显然不能这样译，所以只能根据上下文译为商品价格调查。
This vast enterprise enabled the bank to compare the purchasing power of many countries in 2005. It uncovered some statistical surprises. Prices in China, for example, were much higher than earlier estimates had indicated, which meant the Chinese income in 2005 of 18.4 trillion yuan ($2.2 trillion at then-market exchange rates) could buy less than previously thought. At a stroke, the Chinese economy shrank, in real terms, by 40%.
这一调查使银行可以比较2005年各国的购买力。其统计结果有些是我们没有预料到的，比如中国的物价就比早期估计的数据要高，这意味着中国2005年度的18.4万亿元人民币按当时汇率相当于2.2万亿美元的总收入的购买力比早前估算的要低。这样，中国真实经济的规模一下子就缩小了40％。
本段词汇： at a stroke一下子，立即，当即。比如可以说reconsruction could not be completed at a stroke.
Since then, many scholars have wondered what this economic demotion means for the bank's global poverty counts. It famously draws the poverty line at “a dollar a day”, or more precisely $1.08 at 1993 purchasing-power parity (PPP). In other words, a person is poor if they consume less than an American spending $1.08 per day in 1993. By this yardstick 969m people suffered from absolute poverty in 2004, a drop of over 270m since 1990. The world owed this progress largely to China, where poverty fell by almost 250m from 1990 to 2004. 因此，很多学者开始思考：中国真实经济规模的缩小对世界银行设定的贫困线标准到底意味着什么？众所周知，世界银行划定“1美元1天”为国际贫困线标准，或者是根据1993年的购买力平价设定在1.08美元1天,换句话说，如果1个人1天的消费低于一个1993年每天消费1.08美元的美国人，这个人就可以被认定是处于贫困状态的。在2004年，按此标准，全球有9.69亿人处于绝对贫困状态，这比1990年下降了2.7亿多。一般认为这一进步应归功于中国，因为在中国从1994年至2004年，贫困人口下降了2.5亿之多。
本段词汇：purchasing-power parity (PPP). 购买力平价，yardstick标准，尺度
But if the Chinese economy was 40% smaller than previously thought, surely its poverty count must be correspondingly higher. Surjit Bhalla, of Oxus Investments, speculated that China's toll would increase by more than 300m. He mischievously accused the bank's number-crunchers of conspiring to lift the poverty count so as to keep their employer in business beyond its natural life.
但是如果中国经济规模比早前预计的要小40％，那么中国的贫困人口相应就要增多。Oxus 投资公司的Surjit Bhalla认为中国的贫困人口据此应该增加3亿多，他甚至还带有恶意地指责世界银行的统计数据人员故意提高贫困线标准，因为这可以使其相关业界的雇主延长其年限。
本段难点：keep their employer in business beyond its natural life.，这一句拿不准，估计是不是世行有些项目是外包给一些私有企业。
Give a quarter, take a quarter
The dollar-a-day definition of global destitution made its debut in the bank's 1990 World Development Report. It was largely the discovery of Martin Ravallion, a researcher at the bank, and two co-authors, who noticed that the national poverty lines of half-a-dozen developing countries clustered around that amount. In two working papers* published this week, Mr Ravallion and two colleagues, Shaohua Chen and Prem Sangraula, revisit the dollar-a-day line in light of the bank's new estimates of purchasing power. They also provide a new count of China's poor.
一美元一天的国际贫困线是在世界银行1990年的世界发展报告中首次提出的。其主要发现者是Martin Ravallion,世行的一位研究人员，他和两个合作者注意到有6个发展中国家的贫困线都处于1美元1天左右的水平。本周，他们又发表了一篇论文，在论文中根据世行对购买了新的估计再次研究了1美元1天的贫困线，同时也再次评估了中国的贫困人口数量。
Thanks to American inflation, $1.08 in 1993 was worth about $1.45 in 2005 money. In principle, the researchers could count the number of people living on less than this amount, converted into local money using the bank's new PPP rates. But $1.45 a day strikes the authors as a bit high. Rather than update their poverty line, they propose to abandon it. It is time, they say, to return to first principles, repeating the exercise Mr Ravallion performed almost two decades ago, using the better, more abundant data available now.
由于美国的通涨，1993年的1.08美元按05 年的标准相当于1.45美元。这样，研究者可以按照世行新公布的购买力平价来将美元转化为各国货币，并计算出贫困人口数量。但是1.45美元1天的标准显然让这些研究者们感到有点高，对此，他们的建议并不是更新贫困线标准，而是放弃它。他们认为应该回到一些基本的原则，向Mr Ravallion 20年前做的那样，使用现在更准确，更丰富的数据。
They gather 75 national poverty lines, ranging from Senegal's severe $0.63 a day to Uruguay's more generous measure of just over $9. From this collection, they pick the 15 lowest (Nepal, Tajikistan and 13 sub-Saharan countries) and split the difference between them. The result is a new international poverty line of $1.25 a day.
他们收集了75个国家的贫困线标准，取样十分广泛，从塞内加尔的0.63美元一天到乌拉圭的9美元一天。从这些国家中又选取了15个最低的标准（尼泊尔，塔吉克斯坦，和13个撒哈拉以南非洲国家）并且做了平均化处理。结果是划定了新的国际贫困线标准即1.25美元一天。
本段难点：split the difference bewteen表示均分，平分，如let us split the cost bewteen we three.让我们把成本3个人均分吧。
Why those 15? The answer is philosophical, as well as practical. In setting their poverty lines, most developing countries aim to count people who are poor in an absolute sense. The line is supposed to mark the minimum a person needs to feed, clothe and shelter himself. In Zambia, say, a poor person is defined as someone who cannot afford to buy at least two to three plates of nshima (a kind of porridge), a sweet potato, a few spoonfuls of oil, a handful of groundnuts and a couple of teaspoons of sugar each day, plus a banana and a chicken twice a week.
为什么选择这 15个国家呢，原因既是哲学意义上的，也是实际操作可行的。在划定贫困线时，大多数发展中国家都倾向于按绝对贫困来统计。而这个新的标准是以一个人食、住、衣三方面所必须的最低花费为标准的。在津巴布韦，一个穷人的定义就是他一天买不起三湾粥，一个土豆，几勺油，几勺糖，和一些花生，2个星期不能买一根香蕉和一只鸡。
But even in quite poor countries, a different concept of poverty also seems to creep in, the authors argue. It begins to matter whether a person is poor relative to his countrymen; whether he can appear in public without shame, as Adam Smith put it.
但是研究者们认为即使在一些相当贫困的国家，似乎对贫困的理解也有一些不同的理念。比如，一个人相对他的同乡来说是不是贫穷，他是不是可以很坦然的在公众场合露面，这些都开始变得很重要，而这也是亚当斯密曾经提出的观点。
This notion of relative deprivation seems to carry weight in countries once they grow past a consumption of $1.95 per person a day. Beyond this threshold, a country that is $1 richer will tend to have a poverty line that is $0.33 higher (see chart). The authors thus base their absolute poverty line on the 15 countries in their sample below this threshold.
一旦一个国家每天的人均消费超过了1.95美元，相对贫困的概念就变得重要了。以此为界，如果一国的日人均消费较之高1美元，它的贫困线标准就要相应提高0.33美元。研究者在他们的研究中正是选取了在这个标准之下的15个国家。
How many people in the world are poor by this new definition? The authors are not yet ready to say. But they have taken another look at China. By their new standard, they find that 204m Chinese people were poor in 2005, about 130m more than previously thought.
如果按这个新标准的话，全世界到底有多少人处于贫困状态呢？研究者还没有给出答案。但他们再次对中国的情况进行了评估。按照这个标准，2005年中国有贫困人口2.04亿，比之前估算的要多1.3亿。
That is the bad news. The brighter news is that China's progress against poverty is no less impressive than previously advertised. By Mr Ravallion's and Ms Chen's new standard, the number of poor in China fell by almost 407m from 1990 to 2004, compared with the previous estimate of almost 250m.
这是一个坏消息。但是同时也是一个好消息，因为它表明中国扶贫成就并不比之前宣传的逊色。按照Mr Ravallion 和Ms Chen 的新标准，在1990年至2004年间，中国贫困人口的数量下降了4.07亿，而按之前的标准只下降了2.5亿。
China's economic co-ordinates may be different than thought, but its trajectory is much the same. And therein lies a lesson. Give or take a dime or two, it matters little where a poverty line is drawn. Like a line in the sand, an absolute poverty standard shows whether the economic tide is moving in or out. It does not matter too much where on the beach it is drawn.
这可能改变了中国经济的坐标，但是中国经济的运行轨道却没有变化。这也教给我们一个道理，减去几美分或加上几美分对于贫困线的划定并不重要。就像在沙滩上划一条线，绝对贫困标准显示的只是经济的走向，至于线究竟划在什么地方并不重要。
For practical purposes, policymakers will always care more about their own national poverty lines than the bank's global standard. The dollar-a-day line is more of a campaigning tool than a guide to policy. And as a slogan, $1.25 just doesn't have the same ring to it. A better option might be to reset the poverty line at $1 in 2005 PPP, which would line up reasonably well with at least ten countries in the authors' sample. In adding a quarter to the dollar-a-day poverty line, the researchers may cut its popular appeal by half.
政策制订者们出于一些实际的考量，可能更加在意的是他们本国的贫困线标准而不是世行设定的国际标准。1美元1天的标准与其说是制定政策的参考，不如说是一个竞选工具。但是如果是作为口号来使用的话，1.25美元1天就远没有1美元1天那样有蛊惑力了。更好的一个选择是按2005年的购买力平价将贫困线重新设定为1美元1天，这起码对研究者取样中的10个国家是适用的，如果让1美元1天的标准提高0.25的话，研究者们的受欢迎程度就要大打折扣，甚至要降低一半.
