World Poverty

The fact that a large number of people continue to live in intransigent poverty and hunger in an increasingly wealthy global economy, is a major ethical, economic, and public health challenge of our time.

According the World Bank, poverty statistics show that 1.1 people billion live on less $1 a day (extreme poverty) and 2.7 billion on less than $2 a day (poverty). In the next 23 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty is expected to drop to about 550 million.

Half the children in the world live in a state of poverty   - a number equal to three times the population of the United States. Every day, 29,000 of these children die before the age of five. 20 children are killed every minute, 11 million per year, murdered by poverty, preventable diseases and other related causes.

Death is the most dramatic consequence of poverty, but not the only one. Children born from malnourished mothers and continue to go hungry for the first years of their lives will have their development irreparably compromised. One-third of the world population is currently affected by an iodine and iron deficiency; which can impair brain development in up to 285 million 6-to-12-year-old children.

World Poverty statistics show that 640 million people in the world do not have adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to clean drinking water, and 270 million have no access to health care.

According to UNICEF, as a result of the poor countries debt crisis and its management under the International Monetary Fund – IMF, over 500,000 children under the age of five died in Africa and Latin America in the late 1980s. Some critics charge that the IMF''s policies have decimated social safety nets and worsened lax labor and environmental standards in developing countries.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) operations reach an average of 90 million people in over 80 countries, every year. But now, many of the WFP key projects run the risk of a break in food supplies due to lack of funding. The WFP is funded entirely on voluntary contributions provided by governments, the private sector and individuals.

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