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I heard this sentence from a speech:

The number of people and even the percentage of the population both living in extreme poverty has really gone down over the past two centuries.

(Yalecourses, "Lecture 4: Fusing Capitalist Economics with Communist Politics: China and Vietnam," published on Youtube)

But I can't understand this part well. In my opinion, "both" is a pronoun which refers to the subject "number... and the percentage...", while "living in extreme poverty" modifies "people", but:

  1. Why is "living in extreme poverty" after "both"?
  2. Why using "has" but not "have" when the subject is refered to by "both"?

The following version will make me feel better:

The number of people living in extreme poverty and even the percentage of the population both have really gone down over the past two centuries.

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    It doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, I think "both" might belong at the start of the sentence ("Both the number of people and even the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty have really gone down over the past century."). You sometimes get "both" in other positions but it's effectively in the middle of a noun phrase there, which is very odd. Where did you hear it? Is it online?
    – Stuart F
    Jun 13 at 15:58
  • @StuartF Yes, it's from approximately 6:48 in this video: youtube.com/watch?v=4eUS8trd_yI&t=407s
    – shepherd
    Jun 13 at 16:11
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    It's a mistake.
    – gotube ♦
    Jun 13 at 16:28
  • @StuartF By the way, when you say "Both the number of people and even the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty have really gone down over the past century", does "living in extreme poverty" modify "people"? I think it only modifies "population". Is that right?
    – shepherd
    Jun 14 at 2:55

2 Answers 2

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Speeches by their nature can be problematic to interpret, as the speaker may edit themselves as they go along. With the cited example, there are a couple of explanations:

  • They may have added the word "both" as an afterthought to stress that the population decreased both absolutely and relatively

  • They may have intended to cite another statistic in addition to absolute poverty, but lost their thread and just cited the one

Either way, I'm not sure it adds much to the meaning, and could simply be omitted. But if you wanted to retain it, the most natural place would be at the beginning.

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The number of people and even the percentage of the population both living in extreme poverty has really gone down over the past two centuries.

The idea wasn't properly articulated. both could be replaced with too above, but the non-finite clause headed by living would still be in the wrong place.

The number of people living in extreme poverty has gone down over the past two centuries, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the total population.

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