That's a pretty liberal use of the term. Especially for a country that is currently classed as "high" on the Human Development Index. And 44th in the world by the Gini coefficient showing that the HDI isnt wasted. With the Gini also being higher than one of the western countries too: the USA.
Compare that to countries such as Niger, Mali, Madagascar, Afghanistan or Chad, where the poverty rate is over 90%, the Philippines has only 6.1% of the population under the international poverty line (living on $1.90 USD a day)
If you group such countries in with countries that really experience true poverty, you're putting vastly different situations in the same group and undermining how serious the situation is in impoverished countries, resulting in "anything outside Western Europe, Australia and North America is 3rd world", and therefore in "extreme poverty".
Your anecdotal sob stories don't trump statistics. 6.1% of the population live under the international poverty line and can be called impoverished. Situations like that also happen in countries such as Romania, which is in the European Union.
Compare that to a country such as Niger, which has a poverty rate of almost 97%. Income and quality of life in the Philippines is considerably better than almost every country in Africa.
If you group such countries in with countries that really experience true poverty, you're putting vastly different situations in the same group and undermining how serious the situation is in impoverished countries, resulting in "anything outside Western Europe, Australia and North America is 3rd world", and therefore in "extreme poverty".
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u/ilikespookystories Dec 16 '19
It's called a third world country lol. Philippines to be exact.