POVERTY IN TODAY’S WORLD
What’s it like to be really poor?
More than 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day and an
estimated 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, making do with $1.25 or
less daily.
Can you imagine what it’s like to not have enough food to eat and go
to bed hungry at night?
Poverty is still a big problem in the world today, as you can see from
the numbers. This is in spite of the progress that you see around you.
The good news is that in 2010, only 18% of the world’s population
was living way below the poverty line as compared to 36% in 1990.
It’s a small victory, but the progress is slow.
The World Bank aims to reduce global poverty to 9% by 2020 and to
3% by 2030. They plan to do this by focusing more on promoting
income growth for the bottom 40% of the population and boosting
shared prosperity. It’s a herculean task.
How is poverty measured?
The problem with poverty is that the causes are extremely
complicated with different factors contributing to the problem. Ending
it requires more than just economic growth. “Developed” countries
with strong economies still have a significant number of people who
are struggling to survive.
How do we even measure poverty? The state of poverty is not the
same for everybody. A person may be earning $3 a day but their
financial capability still needs to be compared to the rest of the
population. So, a poor person in the US has a different poverty level
than a poor person in Sub-Saharan Africa.
More: Child Labour in Sweatshops
Quick Facts on Global Poverty
According to UNICEF, around 22,000 children die each day due
to poverty. Hunger, lack of sanitation and access to clean water
and lack of resources for proper health care are the main
reasons.
Back in 2011, 165 million children were stunted due to
malnutrition.
Around 1 billion people welcomed the 21st century not knowing
how to read and write.
Infectious diseases continue to cause the deaths of the poor
people around the world. Diarrhea causes the death of 1.8
million children each year.
More: Facts about Child Slavery
Although poverty has been declining for the last 3 decades, the
poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa continued to increase
between 1981 and 2010. It went up from 205 million to 414
million.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 1/3 of the world’s poorest
people, another 1/3 comes from India and then China,
contributing 13% to the global poverty statistics.
In 2010, the average income of the poor people in developing
countries increased from 74 cents to 87 cents per day. But the
income of the extreme poor in Sub-Saharan Africa remained flat
at less than half of $1.25 per day.
Around 1.1 billion people in developing countries don’t have
access to water and 2.6 billion live in poor conditions lacking
basic sanitation.
1.6 billion people live without electricity.
Ending Poverty
Studies show that the more developed a country becomes, the larger
the income gap grows. We can see from these numbers that a
country’s economic growth does not guarantee that its citizens will be
lifted out of poverty. What needs to be solved is the inequality that
develops.
If you can imagine, a poor person in an industrialized country will
find it harder to interact within their society, than a poor person in a
poor country. The disparity will be more obvious when there is a
wider income gap between the rich and the poor. Due to this
inequality, the instances of crime can increase when people find
themselves looked down upon and disrespected. They feel the
injustice of their situation even more.
More: Child Labor Working Conditions
No one wants to be poor. Sometimes you are born to it and your
circumstances give you fewer options. You spend your days trying
your best to survive, with no energy left to think about being creative
and being concerned about the things that you and I think about daily.
What are the solutions being proposed to solve the problem of poverty
around the world?
1. Bring education to the extremely poor to enable them to have
better jobs.
2. Give them Health Care to improve their physical conditions and
make them more competitive.
3. Use the budget allocated for War and Weapons to stop Global
Hunger.
4. Governments should invest in programs and projects that will be
beneficial to improving the lives of the poor – to open
opportunities for them to lift themselves out of poverty. More
schools, better sanitation, a cleaner environment and more
income opportunities.
5. Give people living without electricity access to renewable
energy.
Reducing poverty is doable. Now more than ever, we have the
technology and the tools we need to end it. What we need is to
increase our efforts and support current initiatives. With everyone’s
help and the willingness of our poor population, we might just
succeed.
Learn more about the social and environmental issues we are facing
today. Find out how you can contribute to the efforts to make our
world a better place. Read The World Counts: Stories
How to Stop Poverty
1.Create Awareness
Social media has become an integral part of daily life, and now is
the time to use it as a voice of social good. Sharing links on
Facebook, Twitter and other platforms will allow people to learn
more about global poverty and will increase the general
consciousness of the issue.
2.Take Action on Your Own
There are a few simple ways we can help as individuals, such as
funding a poor child’s education or by sponsoring a poor family
and influencing others to do so. Raising money and donating it to
a nonprofit can help as well.
3.Donate
Donations can help in so many ways. They do not always have to
take the form of money. This can include donating books to a poor
child or buying groceries for a poor family for a week to help fight
hunger. Donating old clothes, furniture and toiletries can also help
improve the well-being of the poor.
4.Eliminate Gender Inequality
With two-thirds of the world’s illiterate being female, the ratio of
boys and girls should be made equal in primary, secondary and
tertiary education. Girls that attend school are less likely to get
married before age 18, thus decreasing child marriage rates by 64
percent worldwide. Similarly, literate women are less likely to
spread diseases like HIV/AIDS due to a better knowledge of
disease transmission, which helps to accelerate poverty reduction
in the long run.
5.Create Jobs Worldwide
According to the International Labour Organization, 197 million
people are without work worldwide. More employment options in
a country mean more ways of how to stop poverty. To increase
employment, non-literate people can be taught a few skills to
make them employable.
6.Increase Access to Proper Sanitation and Clean Water
Access to clean water and sanitation directly affects health and
education. Currently, 800 million peoplelive without access to safe
water and 2.5 billion live without adequate sanitation. Dirty
bathrooms keep girls from attending schools, thus stopping them
from receiving an education. Lack of clean water spreads diseases
like diarrhea and cholera, which take the lives of more than one
million children each year.
7.Educate Everyone
Education helps increase individual earnings for every member of
a family. UNESCO points out that basic reading skills can lift 171
million people out of extreme poverty, ultimately reducing the
world’s total poverty by 12 percent. UNESCO also mentions there
are currently about one billion illiterate adults in the world.
Above are a few solutions about how to stop poverty, but first, it is
important to understand the roots of the problems that cause poverty.
Since different countries have different reasons for poverty, there will
never be a single solution for all. However, these seven actions can do
a lot to alleviate poverty anywhere.
