Did You Know?

Poverty and Hunger

• Over 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day with nearly half the world’s population (2.8 billion) living on less than $2 a day.
• From 1990 to 2002, in sub-Saharan Africa, although the poverty rate declined marginally, the number of people living in extreme poverty increased by 140 million.
• More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day... 300 million are children. Of these 300 million children, only eight percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 percent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.
• Every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation and the large majority are children under the age of 5.
• An estimated 824 million people in the developing world were affected by chronic hunger in 2003.
• In the early 1990s, the number of hungry people in Eastern Asia declined, but again it is on the rise.
• Every hour more than  1,200 children die away from the glare of media  attention. This is equivalent to three tsunamis a month, every month. The overwhelming majority  can be traced to a single pathology : poverty.
• In 2001–03, FAO estimates there were still 854 million undernourished people worldwide: 820 million in the developing countries, 25 million in the transition countries and 9 million in the industrialized countries.
• Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.

Human Development Report 2003
Human Development Report 2005
Millennium Indicators
Millennium Project
FAO

Halving proportions or halving numbers?

The World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996 established the target of halving the number of undernourished people by no later than 2015. FAO uses the average of the period 1990–92 as the baseline for monitoring progress towards this target. One of the two targets of the first Millennium Development Goal is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. The WFS target is the more ambitious of the two. Indeed, continued population growth means that the proportion of hungry people in the developing countries will need to be cut by much more than half if the target is to be met. If the MDG target is achieved in 2015 by the developing countries as a group, current population projections suggest that we will still be left with around 585 million undernourished, far more (173 million) than the WFS target of 412 million. On the other hand, reaching the WFS target will require a reduction in the proportion of undernourished in the developing countries to 7 percent, which is 10 percentage  points lower than the current level of 17 percent.

• In 1960, Africa was a net exporter of food; today the continent imports one-third of its grain.
• More than 40 percent of Africans do not even have the ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-to-day basis.
• Declining soil fertility, land degradation, and the AIDS pandemic have led to a 23 percent decrease in food production per capita the last 25 years even though population has increased dramatically.
• For the African farmer, conventional fertilizers cost two to six times more than the world market price.
• In 1990, more than 1.2 billion people – 28 per cent of the developing world’s population – lived in extreme poverty, with less than $1 a day. By 2002, the proportion decreased to 19 per cent.
• From 1990 to 2002, rates of extreme poverty fell rapidly in much of Asia, where the number of people living on less than $1 a day dropped by nearly a quarter of a billion people.
• Between 1990–92 and 2001–03, the number of hungry people in Brazil decreased from 18.5 million to 14.4 million and the prevalence from 12 to 8 percent of the population.
• Among the countries that stand out as having achieved a significant reduction in the number of undernourished are Ethiopia, Ghana and Mozambique. In Ethiopia, the number of undernourished people declined by 6 million (17 percent), from 38 million to 32 million, between 1993–95 and 2001–03 with the prevalence falling from 61 to 46 percent. In relative terms, Ghana’s performance was even more impressive. The number of undernourished people was reduced from 5.8 million to 2.4 million (59 percent) and the prevalence of undernourishment from 37 to 12 percent. In Mozambique, the number of undernourished people declined by 900 000 (or by 10 percent) and the prevalence of undernourishment from 66 to 45 percent.
• Potatoes have the highest protein content (around 2.1 percent on a fresh weight basis) and protein of a fairly high quality, with an amino-acid pattern that is well matched to human requirements. They are also very rich in vitamin C - a single medium-sized potato contains about half the recommended daily intake, and farmers in the tropics can harvest between 15 and 25 tonnes within 90 days.

Sources
FAO
Millennium Project
Gap Minder Human Development Trends 
Millennium Indicators

Health

• More than 50 percent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhea.
• Every 30 seconds an African child dies of malaria —more than one million child deaths a year.
• Each year,approximately 300 to 500 million people are infected with malaria. Approximately three million people die as a result.
• Sub-Saharan Africa has only 4% of health workers but 25% of the global burden of disease. The Americas have 37% of health workers but only 10% of the global burden of disease.
• It is estimated that up to 100 000 maternal deaths could be avoided each year if women who did not want children used effective contraception.
• Yet this year, almost 11 million children under five years of age will die from causes that are largely preventable. Among them are 4 million babies who will not survive the first month of life. On top of that 3.3 million babies will be stillborn. At the same time, about half a million women will die in pregnancy, childbirth or soon after.
• In 1988 there were some 350 000 polio cases worldwide; by January 2005 there were only 1185 cases reported.
• Life expectancy at birth in 2002 reached a global average of 65.2 years, compared with 46.5 years in 1950–1955. The longest life expectancy is 85 years for women in Japan and the shortest is 32 years for men in Sierra Leone.

Sources
World Health Report 2006
Millennium Project

Water and Sanitation

• More than 2.6 billion people—over 40 per cent of the world’s population—do not have basic sanitation,and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water.
• Four out of every ten peoplein the world don’t have access even to a simple latrine. Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases.
• One in five people living the developing world lack access to clean water –a suggested minimum of 20 liters per day- while average water use in Europe ranges between 200-300 liters per day and 575 liters in the United States.
• For 1.1 billion people around the world, water resources are unreliable, unsafe or beyond their purchasing power.
• About a third of people without access to an improved water source live on less than $1 a day. Twice this share lives on less than $2 a day. In sanitation, too, there is a strong association between poverty and access: Nearly 1.4 billion of people without access live on less than $2 a day.
• 2.6 billion people lack access to decent sanitation. The Millennium Development Goal of halving the global sanitation deficit against the 1990 level requires bringing it to more than 120 million people every year between now and 2015. The cost with the cheapest latrines is $10 billion, and $34 billion for better technologies
• About 700 million people in 43 countries live below the water-stress threshold of 1,700 cubic metres per person per year. In 20 years, 3 billion people will live in countries under that threshold.
• The largest 20% of farms in Mexico capture 75% of the subsidies for water for irrigation.

Sources
Human Development Report 2006
Millennium Project

Education

• Some 781 million adults (one in five worldwide) lack minimum literacy skills Two-thirds are women.
• Domestic spending on education as a share of GNP decreased between 1999 and 2004 in 41 of the 106 countries with data, though it increased in most of the others.
• There are still around 218million child labourers, three-quarters of them under age 14.
• UNESCO say in the 2007 Global Monitoring Report, that Universal primary education would cost $11 billion a year … that's half what Americans spend on ice cream.
• Gender disparities against girls are highest in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali and Togo, with fewer than 60 girls per 100 boys entering secondary education.
• However, the difference between girls and boys rises dramatically at the upper secondary level, where nearly nine out of ten (87%) children live in countries with gender disparity.
• Young people who have completed primary education are less than half as likely to contract HIV as those missing an education. Universal primary education would prevent 700,000 cases of HIV each year - about 30% all new infections in this age group.
• Globally, about one in six boys and more than one in five girls of primary-school age are not in school.
• Failure to educate girls and women perpetuates needless hunger. Gains in women’s education contributed most to reducing malnutrition between 1970-1995, playing a more important role than increased food availability.
• 77 million children remain out of school, but between 1999 and 2004 the number fell by around 21 million.

Sources
UNESCO
UNESCO - The 2007 Global Monitoring Report
Action Aid
Campaign for Education
Millennium Indicators

HIV/AIDS

• To date around 65 million people have been infected with HIV and AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognised in 1981. The vast majority of the 38.6 million people living with HIV in 2005 are unaware of their status.
• Everyday HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people and another 8,200 people are infected with this deadly virus.
• TB is the leading AIDS-related killer and in some parts of Africa, 75 percent of people with HIV also have TB.
• In 2005, more than 2 million children aged 14 years or  younger were living with HIV.
• By 2005, nearly half of the 39 million people living with HIV were women.
• UNICEF predicts that the number of children who have lost one or both parents due to AIDS will rise to 15.7 million by 2010.
• By the end of 2005, 12million children across sub-Saharan Africa had been orphaned by AIDS.
• Only nine per cent of HIV-positive pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries received ARV prophylaxis for preventing mother to child transmission in 2005 – an increase from three per cent in 2003.
• Globally, as of 2005, an estimated 15.2 million children under 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS; about 80 per cent of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa.
• In South Africa, the country with the largest number of orphans due to AIDS, more than 7.1 million children under 14 living in poverty were benefiting from a government child support grant by April 2006.
• In 2005 AIDS claimed the lives of 2.8 million people and over 4 million people were newly infected with the virus (about 11,000 people each day).
• In 2005, a total of US$ 8.3 billion was estimated to be available for AIDS funding; this figure is estimated to rise to US$ 8.9 billion in 2006 and US$ 10 billion in 2007. But it falls short of what is needed -- US$ 14.9 billion in 2006, US$ 18.1 billion in 2007 and US$ 22.1 billion in 2008.
• The number of people receiving antiretroviral treatment in low and middle income countries has tripled since the end of 2001.
• The number of children orphaned by AIDS has risen, from one million in 1990 to 15 million today; by 2010, the number could exceed 25 million.
• Every minute that passes another child under 15 dies of an AIDS-related illness and another four young people aged 15–24 become infected with HIV. (Children, the missing face of AIDS - UNAIDS- UNICEF- 2005).
• Each day, 1,800 children become infected with HIV, the vast majority of whom are newborns.
• Through the expanded provision of antiretroviral treatment an estimated two million life years were gained since 2002 in low- and middle-income countries.
• Between 2001 and 2005, the number of people on antiretroviral therapy in low- and middle-income countries increased fivefold, from 240,000 to 1.3 million. The scale-up was most dramatic in sub-Saharan Africa: from 100,000 at the end of 2003 to 810,000 just two years later. Prices of antiretroviral drugs have decreased significantly, generic drugs have become more widely available and drug procurement systems have improved. But the target set in 2003 of reaching at least half of those in need of therapy has been missed, and antiretroviral drugs reach only one in five globally.

Sources
UNAIDS
Millennium Project
UNICEF
Millennium Indicators

Women

• One out of every 16 sub-Saharan African women will die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth, compared to just 1 out of every 4,000 in industrialized countries.
• The under-five mortality rate falls by about half for mothers with primary school education.
• An average of only 43 per cent of girls of the appropriate age in the developing world attend secondary.
• Above 80 percent of farmers in Africa are women.
• More than 40 percent of women in Africa do not have access to basic education.
• If a girl is educated for six years or more,as an adult her prenatal care, postnatal care and childbirth survival rates,will dramatically and consistently improve.Educated mothers immunize their children 50 percent more often than mothers who are not educated.
• In parts of Africa and the Caribbean, young women (aged 15–24) are up to six times more likely to be infected than young men their age.
• At around 17.3 million, women make up almost half of the total number of people living with the virus, 13.2 million of which live in sub-Saharan Africa (76% of all women living with HIV).
• AIDS spreads  twiceas quickly among uneducated girls than among girls that have even some schooling.
• Most of the care for people living with HIV takes place in the home, and up to 90% of that is provided by women and girls.
• The children of a woman with five years of primary school education have a survival rate 40 percent higher than children of women with no education.
• A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. This compares with a 1 in 3,700 risk for a woman from North America.
• Every minute,a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth.This adds up to 1,400 women dying each day —an estimated 529,000 each year—from pregnancy-related causes.
• Almost half of births in developing countries take place without the help of a skilled birth attendant.
• After the 2005 elections in Afghanistan and in Iraq, women now represent 27 and 25 per cent of parliamentary seats, respectively.
• 200 million women who wish to space or limit their childbearing lack access to contraception.
• On average, a child whose mother has no education is twice as likely to be out of school as one whose mother has some education.
• Survival rates for children of mothers with at least a secondary education are twice as high as those for children with less educated mothers.

Sources
UNAIDS
Millennium Project
UNICEF
Millennium Indicators

Trade

• The United Nations estimates that unfair trade rules deny poor countries $700 billion every year. Less than 0.01% of this could save the sight of 30 million people.
• International trade is worth $10 million a minute. 70% of this is controlled by multinational corporations.
• The poorest 49 countries make up 10% of the world’s population but account for only 0.4% of world trade. Their share has halved since 1980.
• World trade robs poor countries of £1.3 billion a day – 14 times what they get in aid.
• Whilst world trade has increased 10 times since 1970 and more food is produced per person than ever before, the number of people going hungry in Africa has doubled.
• The prices of many poor countries' key exports are at a 150-year low.
• It’s estimated that rich countries are gaining $141.8 billion per year in trade and Africa is $2.6 billion per year worse off.
• Rich countries spend $100 billion a year to protect their markets with tariffs, quotas and subsidies – this is twice as much as they provide in aid for developing countries.  
• Current trade rules force Mexican farmers who live on a dollar a day to compete with American farmers receiving subsidies of more than US$20,000 a year.
• The average cow in the EU receives more than $2 a day in subsidies, whilst more than 3 million people in developing countries are struggling to survive on less than this.
• The EU gives $86.8 billion a year to its farmers in subsidies. Just $5 billion could help give everyone in the world access to safe water and sanitation.
• On average, coffee farmers are getting $1 a kilogram while consumers are paying about $15 – a mark up of 1500%.

Sources
Christian Aid
CAFOD
Oxfam
Bathstudent

0.7% AID

• In 1970, 22 of the world’s richest countries pledged to spend 0.7% of their national income on aid. 34 years later, only 5 countries have kept that promise. The UK hasn’t.  
• Only five countries — Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden  have met the United Nations aid target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income. Eleven more European Union countries have pledged to do so by 2015. If all donors honour their commitments, aid is expected to reach $130 billion by 2010.

Sources
Save the Children
Millennium Indicators

Debt

• 7 Million children die each year as a result of the debt crisis.
• Every year Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region of the world, spends $14.5 billion repaying debts to the world's rich countries and international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
• If we are to reach the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living on less than one dollar a day by 2015, we must cancel all the debts of the poorest countries.
• More than 85% of the debt owed by the world's poorest countries has yet to be cancelled.
• Debt cancellation needed by the world’s poor: US$ 300bn. Debt relief promised by creditors so far: US$ 110bn. Debt cancellation delivered by July 2003: US$ 36bn.
• Spread over ten years the cost to the UK taxpayer of cancelling £1.3bn debt is £171m a year or £2.85 per UK citizen per year – the price of a pint.
• Spread over 20 years, the cost of cancelling the debts of the 52 Jubilee 2000 countries is only one penny a day for each person in the industrialised world.
• Ethiopia, a country with one of the highest mortality rates in the world, the $197m spent on servicing the national debt in 2001 could have fully financed provision of a basic package of health care for mothers and children.
• The money spent on debt repayments could provide water for around 1.3 billion people.

Sources
World Health Report 2000
DATA
Jubilee Debt Campaign
CAFOD
WDM
WorldCentric
OXFAM

Miscellaneous

• Deforestation, primarily the conversion of forests to agricultural land, continues at an alarmingly high rate – about 13 million hectares per year, a net loss equivalent to about 200 square kilometres per day.  
• Since 1995, the number of young people worldwide has grown by 135 million; during that same period, youth unemployment has risen from 72.8 to 85.7 million.
• Youth now represent close to half of the world’s 192 million jobless people. In many countries, they are more than three times as likely as adults to be seeking work. Over half the population in developed regions had access to the Internet, compared to 7 per cent in developing regions and less than 1 per cent in the 50 least developed countries.  

Sources
Millennium Indicators

More

• Poverty - There are many perspectives as well as people in the world who have talked and written about poverty, failing to reach an agreement about what they are exactly referring to. In spite of having a common basis, there are multiple definitions and concepts on “poverty”. Poverty is not only not having a job, or fearing for the future or living one day at a time. Poverty is also powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom. The main goal of development policies should be to free people from poverty, although this is not only about money or markets, or education and health – notwithstanding the fact that they are indeed very important – but about the access of people to resources and the real possibility of improving their lives. More (Choike)