Extreme poverty

Extreme poverty is the most severe state of poverty, where people cannot meet basic needs for survival, such as food, water, clothing, shelter, sanitation, education and health care. To determine the number of extreme poor around the world, the World Bank characterizes extreme poverty as living on US $1 or less per day, and estimates that 1.1 billion people currently live under these conditions. This $1 a day figure has been adjusted for purchasing power parity, which attempts to eliminate differences in costs of goods and services between countries to present a more meaningful comparison. Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 is a Millennium Development Goal. Economists and activists consider epidemic diseases (AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis) as crucial factors in and consequences of extreme poverty.

Extreme poverty is most common in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Statistics

• More than 1 billion people around the world live on less than $1 a day.
• A child dies every three seconds from AIDS and extreme poverty.
• Over one billion people do not have access to clean water.
• Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.
• More than 50 percent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhea.
• 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.
• Four out of every ten people in the world don't have access even to a simple latrine.
• Declining soil fertility, land degradation, and the AIDS pandemic have led to a 23 percent decrease in food production per capita in 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.
• A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy. This compares with a 1 in 3,700 risk for a woman from North America.

See also

• List of countries by percentage of population living in poverty
• Income inequality metrics
• Make Poverty History
• Millennium Promise
• Poverty line
• Poverty reduction
• The End of Poverty

References

• Jones, Gareth Stedman (2004) An End to Poverty? Profile Books LTD ISBN 1-86197-729-8

External links

• Is There Such a Thing as an Absolute Poverty Line Over Time?
• The ONE Campaign
• New Light on the Behavior of Poverty Lines Over Time
• WhiteBand.org - Global Call to Action Against Poverty
• Scientific American Magazine (September 2005 Issue) Can Extreme Poverty Be Eliminated?