World Poverty

Editor: Justin Healey
ISBN 978 1 920801 47 2
Year 2006

Price: $20.95

  

World Poverty
Volume 237, Issues in Society

Australia is an affluent country, immune to the existence of extreme poverty within its own borders – but twenty per cent of over six billion people on this planet live in absolute poverty, experiencing malnutrition, disease, high infant mortality, low life expectancy, illiteracy and squalid surroundings. Global poverty impacts on everyone on this planet, and globalisation brings with it the responsibilities of ensuring growth and development occurs in poorer countries. Recent initiatives, such as the Live 8 concerts and the limited commitment of the G8 leaders to cancel the unsustainable debts of African countries are only part of the ongoing solution to a complex and overwhelming problem. This book presents defi nitions of poverty, and looks at the effects of absolute poverty on people in developing countries, and what the UN and NGOs, as well as wealthy countries like Australia and the USA, are doing to provide aid, reduce debt and meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Are we doing enough to make poverty history?

Chapter 1  Global Poverty Reduction: Aid and Debt Relief
Global poverty; Fast facts: the faces of poverty; Defining poverty; Poverty facts and statistics; Half the world's children are living in poverty; Poverty reduction; Millennium Development Goals and targets; Progress report on Millennium Development Goals; 'Double aid and we'll feed the world'; Soaring growth drives millions out of poverty; Third world debt undermines development; IMF backs G8's debt relief deal; Outcomes of the UN World Summit; Development outcomes; Did the G8 make poverty history?; Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative.

Chapter 2  Australia and Overseas Aid
Australia's international development cooperation; The Australian overseas aid program; The lucky country falls short; Sing a song of free trade to tackle poverty; Let's be more generous in delivering aid; PM boosts foreign aid to $3.5bn; $4 billion a year won't make poverty history; PM ups the ante for foreign aid.

Glossary; Facts and Figures; Additional Resources; Index



FAST FACTS from this volume
  • Over 1 billion people – 1 in 6 people around the world – live in extreme poverty, which is defined as living on less than $1 a day.
  • More than 800 million go hungry each day.
  • Over 100 million primary school-age children cannot go to school.
  • Based on definitions established by the World Bank, nearly 3 billion people – half of the world's population – are considered poor.
  • Living in extreme poverty (less than $1 a day) means not being able to afford the most basic necessities to ensure survival. 8 million people a year die from absolute poverty.
  • More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day. Another 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day.
  • Every year eleven million children die – most under the age of five and more than six million
    from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia.
  • In some deeply impoverished nations less than half of the children are in primary school and under 20 per cent go to secondary school. Around the world, a total of 114 million children do not get even a basic education and 584 million women are illiterate.
  • Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.
  • More than 50 per cent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhoea.
  • Everyday HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people and another 8,200 people are infected with this deadly virus.
  • 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.
  • Tuberculosis is the leading AIDS-related killer and in some parts of Africa, 75 per cent of people with HIV also have TB.
  • More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day ... 300 million are children. Of these 300 million children, only eight per cent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 per cent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micro-nutrient deficiency.
  • Every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation and the large majority are children under the age of 5.
  • 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 people in the world don't have access even to a simple latrine. Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases.
  • More than 40 per cent 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 per cent decrease in food production per capita in the last 25 years even though population has increased dramatically.
  • The children of a woman with five years of primary school education have a survival rate 40 per cent higher than children of women with no education.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 20% of the population in the developed nations consume 86% of the world's goods.
  • 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%.
  • The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants.
  • A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world's poorest 2.5 billion people.
  • The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global exports.
  • Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.
  • 2.2 million children die each year through lack of routine immunisation.
  • 1.4 million children die each year due to lack of access to safe water or sanitation.
  • 2.1 million children under 14 are infected with HIV/AIDS.
  • 15 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
  • The estimated annual cost of meeting the 8 Millennium Development Goals by 2015 is $US40-70 billion ($51-90 billion).
  • World military spending in 2003 was $US956 billion ($1.24 trillion).
  • In 2000, rich nations agreed to the UN's Millennium Development Goals, which include lifting international aid to 0.7% of GDP by 2015.
  • The 2005 increase in Australia's aid budget from around $2.5 billion now to $4 billion in 2010 would only increase Australia's share of aid from the current level of 0.28 per cent of gross national income (GNI) to 0.36 per cent of GNI. This would still leave Australia languishing in 18th place out of the 22 OECD donors in 2010.