China On A Dollar A Day

Budget travelers are often on the lookout for ways to get around cheaply. We scour the internet for articles like How to Backpack Through Europe On $50 a Day. And why stop at Europe? Why not Travel the World For Less Than $50 a Day. Heck, even Vicky and I often boast about our own frugality in our wrap up posts, such as Korea for $41 a day and Japan for $73 a day. If you do it right, the world can be pretty cheap, can’t it?

What if I said you could do China for less than $1 a day?

What if I said that people ARE “doing” China for less than $1 a day?

Millions, in fact.

According to the world bank over 200 million Chinese were living below this poverty line in 2005. That’s over 10% of the population, and in a country that is a shining example in the fight against poverty. Most of the developing world hasn’t been so lucky, and has seen minimal gains (if any) since 1981 (when the dollar a day benchmark was conceived). And who knows how many are just above it, ever so slightly escaping this damning statistic? Estimates conclude that almost half the world live on less than $2.50 a day, a staggering number which has changed minimally over the past 25 years. Are we supposed to believe that living on $2.50 a day is drastically different than living on $1.25 a day? I doubt it. I assume that both are a miserable existence, the only difference is one doesn’t get talked about in articles in The Economist.

At some point you probably thought to yourself, well, a dollar goes a lot farther there. I know I did. Here are a few things a dollar (6 yuan) buys you in China:

A Snickers

3L of Bottled Water

10 Clementines

A Pair Of Socks

2 Metro tickets or 6 bus rides

Maybe that doesn’t sound so terrible. In a given week, you could eat, drink, get around, and clothe yourself – sort of. But here’s the kicker. When we talk about “a dollar a day” – it’s not what a dollar buys you in China or any other country, it’s what a dollar buys you in America. Yes, that’s right, it’s about equivalent purchasing power. What’s the purchasing power of $1 a day in America? Luckily, we have a word for it – diddly-squat. In China, when you adjust for this purchasing power index, it’s not 6 yuan anymore but less than 3 yuan. Now you’re left with something more closely resembling the following:

It’s true that the Chinese people who are living on “$1 a day” are probably not trying to buy bottled water from supermarkets. They don’t eat snickers bars and if they eat clementines they probably grow their own. I guess I wouldn’t know as I haven’t met them. They live in rural China, the parts of China that Vicky and I don’t go to. Still, imagine if your choice for the day was solely from the above.

What would you choose?

A sobering thought, indeed…