Half the world -- nearly three billion people -- live
on less than two dollars a day. source
1
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a
quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the
world's three richest people combined. source
2
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century
unable to read a book or sign their names. source
3
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on
weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000
and yet it didn't happen. source
4
51 percent of the world's 100 hundred wealthiest
bodies are corporations. source
5
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and
poor of any industrialized nation.source
6
The poorer the country, the more likely it is that
debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither
contracted the loans nor received any of the money. source
7
20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the
worlds goods. source 8
The top fifth of the world's people in the richest
countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign
direct investment -- the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%. source
9
In 1960, the 20% of the world's people in the richest countries
had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% -- in 1997, 74 times as
much. source 10
An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance
between the richest and poorest countries was about:
"The lives of 1.7 million children will be needlessly lost this
year [2000] because world governments have failed to reduce poverty
levels"source 12
The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment
for every $1 it receives in grants. source
13
A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world's
poorest 2.5 billion people. source
14
"The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4
per cent of global exports."source
15
"The combined wealth of the world's 200 richest people hit $1
trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people
living in the 43 least developed countries is $146 billion."source
16
"Of all human rights failures today, those in
economic and social areas affect by far the larger number and are
the most widespread across the world's nations and large numbers of
people."source 17
"Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are
still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside
in Asia and the Pacific."source
18
"7 Million children die each year as a result of the
debt crisis. 8525038 children have died since the start of the year
2000 [as of March 24, 2001]."source
19
For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the
last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 -
2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with
the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator,
countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to
what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period
(1960 or 1980). Among the findings:
Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced
and across the board for all groups or countries.
Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced
for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of
the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant
mortality was also considerably slower during the period of
globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed
during the period of globalization. source
20
"Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on
less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a
day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no
access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity."source
21
The richest 50 million people in Europe and North America have the
same income as 2.7 billion poor people. "The slice of the cake
taken by 1% is the same size as that handed to the poorest 57%."source
22
The world's 497 billionaires in 2001 registered a
combined wealth of $1.54 trillion, well over the combined gross
national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3
billion) or those of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and
North Africa ($1.34 trillion). It is also greater than the combined
incomes of the poorest half of humanity. source
23
A mere 12 percent of the world's population uses 85 percent of its
water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World. source
24
Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998
Global priorities in spending in 1998
| Global Priority |
$U.S. Billions |
| Basic education for everyone in the world |
6 |
| Cosmetics in the United States |
8 |
| Water and sanitation for everyone in the world |
9 |
| Ice cream in Europe |
11 |
| Reproductive health for all women in the world |
12 |
| Perfumes in Europe and the United States |
12 |
| Basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world |
13 |
| Pet foods in Europe and the United States |
17 |
| Business entertainment in Japan |
35 |
| Cigarettes in Europe |
50 |
| Alcoholic drinks in Europe |
105 |
| Narcotics drugs in the world |
400 |
| Military spending in the world |
780 |
source 25
- Number of children in the world
- 2.2 billion
- Number in poverty
- 1 billion (every second child)
- Shelter, safe water and health
-
For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there
are:
640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
- Children out of education worldwide
- 121 million
- Survival for children
-
Worldwide,
10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5
(same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and
Italy)
1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe
drinking water and adequate sanitation
- Health of children
-
Worldwide,
source 26
Notes and Sources
1) This figure is based on purchasing power parity (PPP),
which basically suggests that prices of goods in countries tend to
equate under floating exchange rates and therefore people would be able
to purchase the same quantity of goods in any country for a given sum of
money. That is, the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in
all countries. Hence if a poor person in a poor country living on a
dollar a day moved to the U.S. with no changes to their income, they
would still be living on a dollar a day. In addition, see the following:
Ignacio Ramonet,
The
politics of hunger, Le Monde diplomatique, November
1998
The
9th International Anti-Corruption Conference Plenary Address by
James Wolfensohn, August 2000
March
recognizes the billions living on less than two dollars a day,
EarthTimes.org, October 24, 2000
The
poverty lines: population living with less than 2 dollars and less
than 1 dollar a day from PovertyMap.net provides two maps
showing the concentration of people living on less than 1 and 2
dollars per day, around the world.
Also note that these numbers, from the World Bank, have been
questioned and criticized.
The World Bank has been criticized
for almost arbitrarily coming up with a definition of a poverty
line to mean one dollar per day (of which they say there are
about 1.3 billion people). That figure and how it has been
chosen has been much criticized by many, as shown by University
of Ottawa Professor, Michel Chossudovsky in the previous link.
In addition, in the United States for example, the poverty
threshold for a family of four has been estimated to be around
eleven dollars per day. The one dollar a day definition then
misses out much of humanity to understand the impacts. Even the
two dollars per day that I have pointed out here, while
affecting half of humanity, also misses out the numbers under
three or four, or eleven dollars per day. These statistics are
harder to find, and as I come across them, I will post them
here!
More fundamental than that though, for example, is a critique
from Columbia University, called How
not to count the poor. The report describes an ill-defined
poverty line, a misleading and inaccurate measure of purchasing
power equivalence, and false precision as the three main errors
that may lead to "a large understatement of
the extent of global income poverty and to an incorrect
inference that it has declined." (Emphasis added). This allows
the World Bank to insist that the world is indeed "on the
right track" in terms of poverty reduction strategy,
attributing this "success" to the design and implementation
of "good" or "better policies".
But the statistic is not lost on some of the most prominent people
in the world
The New York Times in one of their email updates,
in their Quote of the Day section, for July 18, 2001 provided
the following quote: "A world where some live in comfort and
plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day,
is neither just, nor stable." -- President Bush
See also James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World
Bank, October 1998 who said: "Today, across the world, 1.3
billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion
live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to
clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion
have no access to electricity." (See also note
21 below.)
Koffi Anan, UN Secretary General, in a speech
on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, 17
October 2000, said "Almost half the world's population lives
on less than two dollars a day, yet even this statistic fails to
capture the humiliation, powerlessness and brutal hardship that
is the daily lot of the world's poor."
2) Ignacio Ramonet, The
politics of hunger, Le Monde Diplomatique, November
1998
3) The State of the
World's Children, 1999, UNICEF
4) State of the
World, Issue 287 - Feb 1997, New Internationalist
5) Holding
Transnationals Accountable, IPS, August 11, 1998
6) The
Corporate Planet, Corporate Watch, 1997
7) Debt - The
facts, Issue 312 - May 1999, New Internationalist
8) 1998 Human
Development Report, United Nations Development Programme
9) 1999 Human
Development Report, United Nations Development Programme
10) Ibid
11) Ibid
12) Missing
the Target; The price of empty promises, Oxfam, June
2000
13) Global
Development Finance, World Bank, 1999
14) Economics
forever; Building sustainability into economic policyPANOS
Briefing 38, March 2000
15) Human
Development Report 2000, p. 82, United Nations Development
Programme
16) Ibid, p. 82
17) Ibid, p. 73
18) World Resources Institute Pilot Analysis of Global
Ecosystems, February 2001, (in the Food
Feed and Fiber section). Note, that dispite the food production rate
being better than population growth rate, there is still so much hunger
around the world.
19) The home page of the Jubilee
2000 web site, as of March 24, 2001
20) The
Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Twenty Years of Diminished
Progress, by Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev and Judy Chen, Center
for Economic Policy and Research, August 2001.
21) James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World Bank,
October 1998, quoted from The Reality of Aid 2000, (Earthscan
Publications, 2000), p.10
22) Larry Elliott, A
cure worse than the disease, The Guardian, January 21,
2002
23) John Cavanagh and Sarah Anderson , World's
Billionaires Take a Hit, But Still Soar, The Institute for
Policy Studies, March 6, 2002
24) Maude Barlow, Water
as Commodity - The Wrong Prescription, The Institute for Food
and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Summer 2001, Vol. 7, No. 3
25) Consumerism,
Volunteer Now! (undated)
26) State
of the World's Children, 2005, UNICEF
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