The latest report by the Global Initiative for Poverty Reduction (GIPR

Question

The latest report by the Global Initiative for Poverty Reduction (GIPR) has shown that around the world, average incomes for people living below the poverty line has increased 6% during the last five years. However, average incomes for people living at or above the poverty line has increased 13.4% during this time. Thus, in real world terms, there has been no real improvement in the standard of living for the very poor.

Which of the following, if true, would strengthen the argument above?

A. GIPR considers the receipt of charitable donations to be a form of income.

B. During the last five years, the cost of medicine for people living below the poverty line has increased 6%.

C. The number of people who are below the poverty line has increased by 7.2% over the last five years.

D. The cost of food in areas where there is great poverty has not changed much during the last five years.

E. Six years ago, GIPR instituted a program to provide clean drinking water to people living in poverty.

chetan2u · Answer

Hi,
lets see what the paragraph tells us..
the average income of those below poverty line has increased by 6% and others by 13.4%. Yet the standard of living has not improved.

what we have to do?
STRENGTHEN it..

What should come in the mind straightway....
If increase in income has not led to improvement in standard of living, then the only reason is this 6% has not offset the increase in prices in these 5 years..

lets see the choices..

A. GIPR considers the receipt of charitable donations to be a form of income.
 out of context

B. During the last five years, the cost of medicine for people living below the poverty line has increased 6%.
CORRECT but only because no other choice is better. 
 here it tells us that the prices of medicine have gone up by 6%, thus eating into the increase in income...
Only PROBLEM is we are just talking of one aspect of measuring standard of living,. it may be possible that everything else has become cheaper..
we go by what is avail

C. The number of people who are below the poverty line has increased by 7.2% over the last five years.
 I could have gone for it, had it said this 7.2% have just fallen to th etop of the category from Above poverty line. this would result in increase in average income of all because of this particular lot..
BUT does not affect the argument in its present state

D. The cost of food in areas where there is great poverty has not changed much during the last five years.
 this would rather weaken it

E. Six years ago, GIPR instituted a program to provide clean drinking water to people living in poverty.
 out of context

chetan2u · Answer

Hi,
 VeritasPrepKarishma  and @VeritasPrep, the choice C has to be picked up only because of compulsion. 
In reality, it cannot be said to strengthening it.
Although there have been few earlier instances where there has been no response from you and other institutes when going wrong, I would still ask you to justify or change the wordings. You all are supposedly good institutes but Every one can make mistakes. lets not give/teach wrong reasoning to students using this platform..

Regards,
Chetan

shasadou · Answer

u mean answer B? yeah you have to pick this one because others just are not relevant.

still i think this is not a gmat-like question. because B introduces a new term - medicine. but there can be other components of standard of living as well: say food, lesiure, education - whatever! if a person below a poverty line - it does not mean he does not buy other components. another example is also true - a person below poverty line does not have at all to buy medicine - so this would not affect him should this rise 1000% or fall -100%.

in a gmat like question B would be most likely an out of scope question whereas the correct one would play with the poverty line overall - i.e. whatver the increase or reshuffle, the poor remain poor

gmatser1 · Answer

I was almost thrown by this line of reasoning as well, but remember, you are strengthening the conclusion. B, while it doesn't strengthen the conclusion that much, still strengthens it a little bit. Along POE, B it is.

tryambaks · Answer

Average income of poor people has increased by 6%

Option (C) Saying the number of people has increased 7.2%

Average income = Total Income / Total people = I/P
If P has become 1.07P then to increase the average by 6% , I has to increase more than 7.2%. what that means is the overall income has increased. That in some way , in a very far fetched tone weakens the argument saying that standard of leaving has boosted

Option (B) says Medicine cost , hence cost has increased by 6% . Now average income also increased by 6% and all excess income is going to be consumed by increased cost. So No gain .
So standard of leaving will remain same. No good luck there. Strengthens it . At least some how !!!!

Hence Answer = B

chesstiger · Answer

so, the question assumes that increasing in cost does not equal higher quality of services. Thus, any increasing in cost will reduce the consumption power of poor people. I misread the question, and went for D

mehrotrayashraj · Answer

Lets assume that the person was earning 100 of which 10 was going for medicines. 
He/She now earns 106 and 10.6 goes for medicines. This still leaves us with 5.4 to increase standard of living. B cannot be the right answer.
I went for A as charitable donations could be variable and this should not be added in the income. Thus the income could still be 100 and thus in the sense of the real world, would have had no significant change. 
 chetan2u  could you please explain this.

chetan2u · Answer

Hi,

The Q is of poor quality..
The reason B could be answer is that we ASSUME that the increase in medicine price represents the increase in other things too.
As I mentioned, it seems to be a poor quality Q. And if you see the source has not answered it at all in the post.

A cannot be the answer as you do not know where have those charitable donations gone.

gmat1393 · Answer

VERITAS  OFFICIAL EXPLANATION : 
 
For any strengthen or weaken question, the key is to find the gap and not let the testmakers sell you anything that you don’t want. This argument claims that, although the average income for individuals below the poverty line has increased, average income for individuals living at or above the poverty line has also increased, so standard of living hasn’t increased for the very poor. The gap in this logic comes from trying to draw this conclusion just from the fact that incomes for both groups have increased. It is possible that, barring any rising costs for essential goods and services, everyone is better off. Your correct answer will therefore have some reference to rising prices, addressing this gap.

The only answer choice that includes an increase in cost is (B). If the income of the very poor increased but the cost of an essential good like medicine has also increased by the same amount, then that would strengthen the argument that standard of living hasn’t increased. The very poor can’t buy anything extra with their extra money.

You could also take a look at the others and use process of elimination to confirm your answer. Answer choice (A) doesn’t address costs at all and can be eliminated. Note, however, that unless you took the time to analyze the argument and find the gap that (A) might seem reasonable. While (C) isn’t a good outcome, the number of people living below the poverty line doesn’t affect whether income increases affect standard of living. Answer choices (D) and (E) would weaken the argument. Any decrease or lack of change in cost of living will lead to an increase in standard of living rather than a decrease.

nitesh50 · Answer

HI  chetan2u

IN what scenario will choice C become a relevant answer choice?

"had it said this 7.2% have just fallen to th etop of the category from Above poverty line. "
You have mentioned the above, can you please explain what does this exactly mean.

Thank you

Regards
Nitesh

mimishyu · Answer

I just thought this question has some issue with “argument” , I don’t know whether my thinking is wrong or not but I’ll try my best to illustrate as below

As for why (B) be the correct answer is that its base on the argument which states that “increasing of income for people below the poverty line has not help improve the living standard for people below the poverty line”….we take this as argument(1), and members discuss on the platform to this passage seems all agree on this point

I choose (D) for the correct answer is that I have another view to the argument(1)

we should first notice what the question stem says:

(1) average income for people below the poverty line
increase 6% during last five years

(2) average income for people at or above the poverty line
increase 13.4% during last five years 
(here my question is that I thought argument(1) doesn’t take this sentence into account)

and statement (A)&(B) lead to the conclusion:
thus, there has no real improvement in the standard of living for the very poor

I thought argument(1) should be modified as such like:

cause…..the extent to the increase of average income for the poor(at or below the poverty line) is too small compare with those of rich people, though there still has some increase to the poor
---->lead to
effect…..no improve to the living standard of poor

cause (A)-->lead to --> effect (B)

or to simplify

income increase too small for poor people ….(A)
---->no improve to the living standard of poor people ….(B)

….this is what I thought the argument should be

If base on this argument, I thought (D) rather than (B) should be the correct answer

A. GIPR considers the receipt of charitable donations to be a form of income.

real income + donate income=total income
we can only infer from choice(A) that real income must be smaller than total income if we take donation into account, however we still don’t know how will this income affect living standard which may go up or down

B. During the last five years, the cost of medicine for people living below the poverty line has increased 6%.

no improve for poor is due to “high medicine cost” rather than “increase for income too small”, thus offer another cause to the argument, thus weaken

C. The number of people who are below the poverty line has increased by 7.2% over the last five years.

“poor population go up” could offer another reason why there’s no improve in living standard population go up could offer another reason why there’s no improve in living standard, thus weaken

D. The cost of food in areas where there is great poverty has not changed much during the last five years.

food cost for poorest not change much, only this one could make room for the other reason as to it’s “increase for income too small” which cause no improve in living standard among the poorest

E. Six years ago, GIPR instituted a program to provide clean drinking water to people living in poverty.

provide clean water may or may not improve the living standard, here we don’t know for sure, and if it indeed improve the living standard as to what our common sense would reason, it will, same as (B), still weaken rather than strengthen my argument

clean water--->living standard for poor go up

no clean water---> living standard for poor go down
(offer another reason to why living standard go down, thus weaken)

Yellkrishna · Answer

In real world terms, there has been no improvement.

A. The statement could be true, but nothing about charitable donations to Bpl people has been mentioned. 
B. Since cost of medicine increased the same percentage as the income, in real world terms, there has been no improvement. 
C. There has been an inc. of 7.2% population of Bpl people. But maybe the world grew by the same amount. Or maybe the bpl population grew by a lesser amount than the world average. So, no. 
D. This actually weakens the argument. This shows that there has been real world change. 
E. Irrelevant.

Posted from my mobile device

BALAGURU · Answer

Hi all, 
 we want to conclude that  the BPL people are not in good position as with ABL people 
the trade off is between option B and C
B. During the last five years, the cost of medicine for people living below the poverty line has increased 6%.

C. The number of people who are below the poverty line has increased by 7.2% over the last five years.

Option C ==> the number of people increase and cause the poor people count to increase, BUT the average income is 6% increase only and doesn't say anything about downgrading the living

Option B ==> the increase in essential goods price to 6% indicates the incrase in income level is of no use to improve my standard of living. 
## depicts what i want

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