Grace wrote:I'm hearing that poverty is on the rise as is the human population, so I'm curious as to the statistics you are talking about over the last 50 years.

Grace wrote:Take Native Americans for example, before European influence; the sick, the weak, and the elderly who could not make the migration trek to 'happy hunting grounds' were left behind. This may sound cruel by modern standards, but it kept the tribe healthy and strong. These people may not have had money in the bank or fine silk from China, but they were rich in character and culture.

Did majority of population have their basic human needs satisfied? (such as access to clean water, food, clothes and a shelter) This is what puzzles me.

Grace wrote:

Did majority of population have their basic human needs satisfied? (such as access to clean water, food, clothes and a shelter) This is what puzzles me.

The Native Americans had cleaner water than European city folks. They had all the food they needed. When the Spaniards arrived, Native Americans were not starving, no one had ever gotten chicken pox, and no one had ever come down with the flu.
The natives of the Americas may not have lived in castles or manors, but their tepees, cliff dwellings, igloos, and adobe shelters were comfy, warm and adequate. So what is so puzzling?

Grace wrote:I thought we were discussing poverty.

Yet, we digress, and digress...

Grace wrote:
The Native Americans had cleaner water than European city folks. They had all the food they needed. When the Spaniards arrived, Native Americans were not starving, no one had ever gotten chicken pox, and no one had ever come down with the flu.

Mazille wrote:Bookmarked.

Also, *sigh*.

home_ wrote:
It's hard to find good articles on this matter. Does anyone have any recommendations or maybe can anwser preceding questions?

Almsgiving, though it cannot be stopped at present, as without it we should have hunger riots, and possibly revolution, is an evil. At present we give the unemployed a dole to support them, not for love of them, but because if we left them to starve they would begin by breaking our windows and end by looting our shops and burning our houses … In ancient Rome the unemployed demanded not only bread to feed them but gladiatorial shows to keep them amused; and the result was that Rome became crowded with playboys who would not work at all, and were fed and amused with money taken from the provinces. That was the beginning of the end for ancient Rome. We may come to bread and football (or prizefights) yet.

Roman society is often represented as one of social extremes - with the wealth, power and opulence of an emperor existing alongside the poverty, vulnerability and degradation of a slave.

Doubtdispelled wrote:Poverty in the Roman World

home_ wrote:

Doubtdispelled wrote:Poverty in the Roman World

This book is just what I've been looking for, but trouble is that it's pretty expensive and unfortunately there is no copy in any of libraries nearby.

Animavore wrote:£110 for a book!?

home_ wrote: Particularly in Ancient Greece and Roman Empire: what was the proportion of citizens that didn't have access to basic human needs? (water, food, shelter and others)

Mazille wrote:Up until Solon's reforms Athens, like pretty much everyone else, got by on the basis of subsistence farming, which barely enabled the farmers to feed themselves, if it even was that much.

Doubtdispelled wrote:On the other hand, those links are just from the first page of a google search 'poverty in roman times'. Who knows what else might turn up for someone with more time?

maik wrote:On the hard core of your question, whether there was access to basic human needs, i think that there must be a relatively satisfying adequacy of natural resources for a civilization to last and, the broader their distribution, the more original the civilization. That would explain at a degree the development of the ancient greek civilization.

home_ wrote:

Mazille wrote:Up until Solon's reforms Athens, like pretty much everyone else, got by on the basis of subsistence farming, which barely enabled the farmers to feed themselves, if it even was that much.

But how do we know this? What's the basis for this claim?
If we were talking about feudalism, then the claim could be justified with much historical data. But Greek and Roman (and also native Americans, which Grace brought up) had different culture and it's not so clear that farmers were in such bad situation. It could be misleading or even wrong if we only projected European middle age poverty onto other historical societies.

Mazille wrote:I think you are looking at this the wrong way, maik. If you bring up the example of Athens dabbling in the arts, philosophy and trade that doesn't mean that every inhabitant of Athens had his basic needs met.

For such a sophisticated culture to arise you only need a small minority of inhabitants to be rich.

The rest can still be piss-poor and worry about how to feed themselves on a daily basis. Up until Solon's reforms Athens, like pretty much everyone else, got by on the basis of subsistence farming, which barely enabled the farmers to feed themselves, if it even was that much. Solon also abolished the costum of farmers and their families being sold off into slavery if they could not honour their debts.

The same goes for - say - Sparta. The reason that the Spartans could afford to develop such a specialised warrior culture during the Persian wars and the Peloponnesian war was because the city of Sparta itself was adequately fed by the helots from the surrounding countryside, who were only different to slaves by name.

The same goes for much of Roman history. Marius' military reforms, for example, were needed because the small farmers were deep in debts and lost their land to rich land-owners who just added them to their already massive estate. This led to a major influx of poor proles into the urbs proper. No farmers who could afford armour and weapons meant no army, hence the reforms that the state itself should arm the citizens and even give them land after their service. Of course, this isn't the full picture, but I think it shows just how poor the majority of people were.