Hi Nyasha, the mortality rate of poor people is relatively high indeed, but so is their fertility rate, which offsets earlier demises. This contributes to a quite stable proportion between the rich and the poor.

(1) The financial wealth distribution is not normal, i.e., there is a considerable difference between average and median financial wealth, which is perfectly natural; (2) high mortality rate is compensated by high reproduction rate, which is perfectly natural; (3) while wealthy people can become poor very quickly if they cannot handle themselves being wealthy, poor people cannot become wealthy very quickly for they seldom know what it means and if they do they don't have the means; (4) poor people are very inefficient in wealth generation because they consume and have expenses, whereas wealthy people are very efficient in wealth generation because they produce and have investments; (5) poor people tend to live day by day, whereas wealthy people generation by generation (and one healthy child, well taken care of and tutored, may be enough to preserve the family wealth).

Thanks for the insights, Martin. However, all the 5 points you raised do not answer my question, but instead lead to more questions. I'll show how, by using an example of the most unequal country in the world, South Africa, where I live.

POINT #1: Your point about 'financial wealth distribution' not being normal, because of "a considerable difference between average and median financial wealth" (which you say is 'perfectly natural') does not make sense in South Africa and other highly unequal societies.

Note that South Africa's population is described as 76.4% "Black African", 9.1% "White", 8.9% "Coloured", 2.5% "Indian/Asian", and 0.5% Other/Unspecified. Yet Black Africans earn an average income of R92 983 (US$6,235); Coloureds earn R172 765 (US$11,586); Indians/Asians earn R271 621 (US$ 18216); whites earn R444 446 (US$29,806). Basically, in South Africa, the top 1% of South African earners take home almost 20% of all income in the country, the top 10% take home 65%, and the remaining 90% get only 35% of total income. Now, note that Black Africans are overrepresented in the 90% who get only 35% total income. On the other hand, Whites are overrepresented in the top 10% that take home 65% total income. Black people on average earn 20% of what whites earn. (Of course, there is a small Black elite that earns as much as, if not way more, than the average white earner). We must thus agree that whatever average income we come up with is significantly skewed by the income of Whites that is extremely high and the income of Black people that is extremely low. In the last count in 2017, 55.5% of South Africa's population was living in poverty (more than 1 in 2, statistically). Black Africans are extremely overrepresented in this 55.5%, and Whites are extremely underrepresented in it. (You could almost say there are no Whites in the 1 in 2 who live in poverty, which does not make sense, but also does make sense). BASICALLY, in cases of inequality such as this, we CANNOT talk of normal distribution or not-normal distribution. There just is NO distribution. A majority of Black people in South Africa have ZERO financial wealth, and thus must not be part of your normal or not-normal distribution of financial wealth. Once you include them, you get very strange (and fake) results.

There is a reason you can't continue talking about a distribution. Something just does not make sense: When it comes to bad things (such as prison population, disease, hunger), the stats in South Africa tend to reflect the demographies. Black people naturally dwarf all the other groups in these bad things, because they are 76% of the population. You won't find many whites in the statistics of bad things in South Africa. Now, this is what I would call perfectly natural. BUT when it comes to good things (like high incomes, ownership of companies, good health etc.), Whites, who make up only 9% of the population, are SUDDENLY overrepresented (above 70%) - AND Black people start to disappear from the good things. You won't find many Blacks in the statistics of good things in South Africa.Why is this the case? You find the same strangeness with statistics of black people in the US in prisons (which numbers do not reflect the population), black people in prisons in Brazil (which numbers do not reflect the population), or Aborigines in Australia in prisons (which numbers do not reflect the population), and the Roma in prisons in Bulgaria (which numbers do not reflect the population). The same goes for black women likely to die in childbirth, compared to white American women. These are the bad things. Yet if you want the statistics of black people in the US, or Aborigines in Australia or Roma in Bulgaria, who are in corporate ownership, high incomes etc. (what I call the good things), SUDDENLY these figures revert to reflecting demographies (that these ethnicities are in a minority, and that whites are in a majority). White people in Brazil and in the US are normally represented/distributed when it comes to the share of good things. Black people in in Brazil and the US are normally overrepresented (to the point of being un-distributed) when it comes to the share of bad things.

So, Michael, my question still stands. You have not answered it.

Let me know if you still want me to address the other 4 points you made, which are also very flawed - even more so than your #point 1.

i stand my ground.

Sure @MartinKlvana, you can stand your ground but "distribution", "averages" and "median" in contexts of inequality are easily confounded and are certainly not what you would call "perfectly natural". Perfectly unnatural is what they seem to be.

L'inégale répartition des richesses, l'égoïsme des richesses et les politiques de développement même celles dites orientées vers les pauvres leur profite très peu. Le taux de mortalité des pauvres est une conséquence logique de leurs conditions de vie précaires : pas d'accès aux soins de santé appropriés, sous aliment, condition de vie et de logement difficile, pas d'accès à l'eau potable pour plusieurs.

Gabriel Guideme thanks for the answer. But would you mind translating into English for me please?

You are welcome. I will do it next.

The unequal distribution of wealth, the selfishness of wealth and development policies even those said to be oriented towards the poor benefit them very little. The mortality rate of the poor is a logical consequence of their precarious living conditions: no access to appropriate health care, undernourishment, difficult living and housing conditions, no access to drinking water for many.

Gabriel Guideme I agree. The mortality rate of the poor is a logical consequence of their precarious living conditions. But this does not quite answer my original question, but simply restates it. My question, in a word, is: why are the poor, who die so much more frequently than rich people, still in a majority?

Gabriel Guideme Surely after a few thousand years of a consistently high mortality rate of poor people, there should be more rich people than poor people?

Hi Nyasha, the mortality rate of poor people is relatively high indeed, but so is their fertility rate, which offsets earlier demises. This contributes to a quite stable proportion between the rich and the poor.

Jarosław Paszek Thanks for your answer. But it still does not answer my question. You seem to be answering a question that I did not ask. I did not ask how the high population of poor people has remained "stable". The stock answer to that question, given by economists and those who study population, is the one that you have given: that high fertility offsets high mortality (and high mortality offsets high fertility etc.).

My contention is that we should surely observe a set of gradual, consistent (or consistently) slight increases in the population of the rich, whatever the dynamics of the population of the poor. Notice that there is no question of the low mortality at birth of the rich (and their low birth rate) offsetting their average low mortality. If there is stability in the population of the rich, it does not seem that it is brought about by any sort of "offsetting".

My question is: given that the high population of the poor is so-called "stable" (due to fertlity offsetting mortality, and mortality offsetting fertility), we must surely also observe something discernible happening within the population of long-living rich people. That is, surely the population graph of long-living rich people should (over 100, 300, 500, 1000, 2000 years) start showing consistent signs of slight increase. The graph should, at least, nudge upwards always, however tiny the uptick. Consistent "slight increases" in the population of the rich should, over hundreds or thousands of years when the population of the poor has remained high but stable, become noticeable. Not so?

If there was to be a noticeable increase in the population of the rich, however slight each time, it is logical to expect that over time these accumulations of slight increments should be enough to reach and match, or even surpass, the historically "stable" population of the much-dying, much-"breeding" poor. Indeed, it becomes just a question of time when the rich would become as populous as the poor. It may take 500 years, or it may take take 3000 years, but it seems that it must become inevitable that at some point the rich would be as populous as, or even more populous than, the poor.

Your assumption that the "stability" in the population of the poor "contributes to a quite stable proportion between the rich and the poor" wrongly assumes that the rich are fewer because the poor are many. This would be illogical. The rich are not less because the poor are more. The poor are not more because the rich are less. There is no reason we should not see the rich increase even if and even when the population of the poor remains high (high but stable, stable but high). The poor do not die in large numbers or get born in large numbers because of the growth levels (or lack of them) of the population of the rich. There is no necessary causation between the (state of the) population of the rich and the (state of the) population of the poor.

Nyasha Mboti , why do you think that the population of the rich should increase with time?

PS: Logomachy, your weapon of last resort?

Martin Klvana Why do I think that the population of the rich should increase with time? It is not me who is thinking that. It is natural, if the folks are living long and eating healthy and eating well and not dying in child birth and having prime medical insurance etc. These are the minimum conditions for, at the very least, a slight (or slightly discernible) population increase.

That is, they'd be, with time, more of them than the other folks who live shorter lives, have a consistently higher mortality, and who die in large numbers in child birth etc.

Try imagining a poor family of nine children. 1 child dies in child birth, 1 dies of malnutrition at age four, 1 succumbs to cholera (or malaria, or dysentry, or [input preventable disease here]) before she is thirteen, 1 is killed in gang violence at eighteen, 1 dies in prison, 1 is trafficked, 1 is adopted by a rich Scandinavian family, 1 dies in an earthquake, and 1 somehow reaches old age.

Now try imagining a wealthy family of 2 children, where 1 child dies in an earthquake and 1 reaches old age.

Now try imagining that there was no earthquake. There would be 2 out 2 wealthy children likely to reach old age, and 2 out of 9 poor children likely to reach old age.

All it needs for the population of the rich to increase over that of the poor is for the wealthy family to adopt a poor child, and for there not to be an earthquake.

If you repeat this "process" over 100, 200, 500, 1000 years, what would the population of the rich look like?

Martin Klvana No question of logomarchy. We have been using words this whole time. But I have tried to retain some clarity in everything I've said. Sorry if it appears as logomarchy to you.

That is a thrilling debate. Let us have a radical look at facts:

- population dynamics

- wealth dynamics

Population angle: do you transmit wealth to your children? All of it? Are there historical mechanisms reshuffling Property?

That's for generational changes from wealthy to poor: see 1917 Russia, 1947? China, etc.

Many Russian princes became taxi drivers in Paris in the 1920s.

How do you become wealthy from a poor background: Kirk Douglas, a great person, Was self made, etc... Education gives steps up on the social ladder

so there are transitions up and down.

How do you define Wealthy vs poor?

own a tool?own a house?own a city? own a country?

Do not get food? Get food which kills you by making you Fat?

Access to health, access to healthy food, healthy work, healthy life.

These access questions determine your life expectancy, and that is the only relevant issue.

The issue is phrased better as Access not Wealth.

AGREED?

Renaud Di Francesco Access? Wealth? It may be helpful to pose the question in terms of access (as you suggest), as it may bring clarity, or it may hinder us further and throw us into a theoretical no-man’s-land. We can test this by acceding to your preference and restating my original question/puzzle as: how is it that those who do not have access are not eventually outnumbered by those with access? But, immediately, we can see that the problem becomes de-focused and imprecise. Access to what? The complication with posing the problem in terms of access is the risk that everything gets relativized (One man’s access is another man’s non-access; what is access in one locale could be non-access in another etc.), until we no longer know if we are coming or going. As an indicator, access may be revised up or down as authorities fiddle with thresholds, the way they do with the bread line. Also, access may be subject to semantic quibbling or important nuances from place to place and time to time.

The supreme advantage of posing the problem in terms of poverty (or wealth) is that being poor is like living in a Petri dish: you are contained, enclosed and displayed in certain places (“dead zones of the world”) which are not that hard to discern and where life, lack and mortality follow a certain discernible pattern. We are never in doubt, for instance, how a favela (Rocinha in Rio) or a barrio (in Caracas, for instance) or a slum (Kibera in Kenya, or Dharavi in Mumbai) is brought about, or how the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 happened the way it did, or why Downtown Eastside Vancouver or Los Pajaritos in (Seville) Spain are the way they are, or why there are more dollar billionaires in the zip codes of downtown Manhattan (Tribeca etc.) than anywhere else in the world but so much hardship in the Zip codes of South Bronx (Crotona East, Morrisania etc.), how and why the division of Detroit by the M-102 ("8 Mile"), how and why the ghetto of Stolipinovo in Bulgaria, or Botkyrka and Rinkeby and Tensta and Husby in (Stockholm) Denmark, or Molndal in (Gothenburg) Sweden, or Bukit Merah and Jalan Kukoh in Singapore, or Oldham (Greater Manchester), or Bwgcolman and Delgamuukw and Jilkminggan and Mungallalla and Yarrabar and Myall Creek in Australia, and Tchula in Mississippi, and Hill District in Pittsburgh, are all the way they are, why Israel’s richest neighborhood (Park Tzameret in Tel Aviv) is just three miles away from its poorest one (Ramat Elhanan, in nearby Bnei Brak), why the richest square mile in Africa of Sandton (in South Africa) is just a mile or so away from one of the poorest square miles of Alexandra, and so on. Whether these are problems of access or not, I cannot say. But I know that people in places like Rocinha, Kibera, Dharavi, Grenfell, Ramat Elhanan, Downtown Eastside Vancouver, South Bronx, Los Pajaritos et al live in these Petri dishes of poverty, and that the problem cannot just be posed as one of access. Again, access to what?

Ultimately, I am not bothered what we call it ("access"; "wealth"; "poverty"; "lack of access"), as long as we are aware what is going on.

Renaud Di Francesco Do we transmit wealth to our children? Do we transmit all of it? Are there historical mechanisms of reshuffling property? The simple answer is to turn your questions upside down and pose them in terms of their opposites. Do we transmit poverty to our children? Absolutely. Do we transmit all of it? Well, what does it matter? Are there historical mechanisms of reshuffling poverty? Not really, except if one is thinking about revising the threshold of the breadline in order to include more people or less people.

When you talk about generational changes from wealthy to poor (e.g. 1917 Russia, or 1947 China, etc.), you do not contradict the assumption I make that the population of the poor is, or remains, high (and higher than the population of the rich). Here you seem to be providing evidence that the population of the poor routinely gets added to by thinning out the ranks of the rich. That many Russian princes became taxi drivers in Paris in the 1920s actually proves my point: the population of the poor is readily absorbent; that of the rich seems to get leaner and leaner. But why is this the case? Ultimately, are you saying that generational changes from wealthy to poor are the reason the population of the rich never increases to the point of matching or outgrowing that of the poor? I am not sure I get your point.

The question is not how one becomes wealthy from a poor background, like Kirk Douglas, but why one who becomes wealthy like Kirk Douglas does not cause a population increase among the rich. One can be self-made, can educate themselves up the social ladder, or steal to get there, or inherit a fortune, or win the Lottery, and so on, but the question remains: why do the rich not increase (until, eventually, they are more than the poor? Your answer seems to be that the world maintains a tit-for-tat universal equilibrium because “there are transitions up and down”. But clearly more people become poor than become rich, so this transition cannot result in a tit-for-tat equilibrium.

How do I define wealthy vs poor? The poor, as I said, live in the Petri dishes of Rocinha, Kibera, Dharavi, Grenfell, Ramat Elhanan, Downtown Eastside Vancouver, South Bronx, Los Pajaritos et al. The poor, as I said, are those whose population is always higher than that of the rich despite living harder lives (less medical care, poorer diets, less money to spent, permanent austerity).

The “access questions”, which you say determine one’s life expectancy, and the issue of access – which is say is the only relevant issue – are roundly contradicted by the fact that the poor continue to live where they would rather not live, continue to eat what they would rather not eat, and to take home wages that they would rather were increased etc. Some call it resilience. (I think the whole resilience discourse is rubbish). That the poor since time immemorial continue to live where amenities are fewest and poorly maintained, and where life is hardest, suggests that access determines little, if anything, in this larger question about the populations of the poor and the populations of the rich.

Thus I am not overly convinced that the issue is better phrased as Access rather than Wealth. My question remains.

One becomes richer by producing more than consuming and saving the difference.

Martin Klvana I agree with you. One becomes richer by producing more than they consume and saving the difference. One also gets richer by fraud, corruption, theft, arbitrage, rents and rent-seeking, spoilation and exploitation of the poor, speculating on the stock exchange, colonisation, slave trading, slave-holding etc.

Martin Klvana And how does one become poor? By producing less than they consume and not saving the difference?

There are many ways of becoming richer, but none of them is easy. There are many ways of becoming poorer, and all of them are easy.

One becomes poorer by producing less than consuming; the difference is a loss or a debt.

I have a secondary question: countries with extremes of both wealth and poverty. It's called inequality. Huge wealth from exploiting the poorest=slavery

@Nyasha Mboti you think emotionally. Take some distance. Consider a fairy tale about nature. Animals instead of humans. I love all animals. Flies live maybe 15 days and some turtle species live 100 years maybe 200. There are more flies than turtles on the earth.

To know why, you need to look at population dynamics. Protesting against poverty is ok but does not helpes explaining why. How does it appear? Bad crop maybe, in rural societies. War and destruction, economic crisis, personal issue (health, etc)?

How does it continue? Maybe corrupt state, maybe defacto slavery, maybe No chance to improve your life?

Idem for getting rich: dad was? making money by luck, work, theft, corruption? Honest or Not?

That's what we do here on researchgate: Understand with some scientific approach

Martin Klvana You say "There are many ways of becoming richer, but none of them is easy. There are many ways of becoming poorer, and all of them are easy."

Can you give just one real world example of a "hard way" of becoming "richer" and just one real world example of an "easy way" of becoming poorer? No hypothetical examples please.

Martin Klvana You say "One becomes poorer by producing less than consuming; the difference is a loss or a debt." Really?

Can you please give just one real world example of this phenomenon? No hypotheticals.

Renaud Di Francesco Is it necessary to buttress your point by ad hominen? How have you advanced the debate by drawing attention to my "thinking emotionally"? What does it even mean anyway that a person thinks emotionally? Is that even a thing? (Seems to me like a contradiction in terms. Not so?). Or do I hear the usual accusation that "Africans/Black people are emotional"?

I cannot continue the discussion with you on these terms. Sorry.

Renaud Di Francesco And I find your suggestion that you think "scientifically" and I, on the other hand, am not capable of doing so or am not doing so, to be patronising and a little offensive. Once again, your resort to ad hominem is completely uncalled for.

If you want us to have an intellectual conversation or debate, I advise that you keep your personal opinions about your fellow discussants/debaters to yourself. I will respectfully do the same.

For me, this discussion thread ends right here. I am out and will not return.

Martin Klvana Thanks for the journey, though and all your well thought out answers. This thread will miss you.