Poverty News....What Do You Know?

1. As of 2008, 79.8% of humanity lives on less than $10 per day. (5.15 billon people).
2. As of 2008, 48.6% of humanity lives on less than $2.50 per day. (3.14 billion people).
3. As of 2008, 40.2% of humanity lives on less than $2 per day. (2.60 billion people).
4. As of 2008, 21.7% of humanity lives on less than $1.25 per day (1.40 billion people)
5. As of 2008, 13.6% of humanity lives on less than $1 per day. (880 million people).
6. As of 2008, the world’s richest 20% consume 76.6% of private consumption.
7. As of 2008, the world’s richest 10% consume 59.9% of private consumption.
8. As of 2009, 25,000 children under 5 years old die each day due to poverty.
9. As of 2006, access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
10. As of 2007, every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.
11. As of 2007, 1.6 billion people — a quarter of humanity — live without electricity.
12. As of 2007, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
13. As of 2009, the poverty line in the USA for a single individual is drawn at $10,830 per annum or $29.67 per day.
14. As of 2006, 10.6 million children die every year from causes that are easily preventable - equal to 29,000 children every day.
15. As of 2006, half of these deaths 29,000 daily deaths of children occur in just six countries – China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.
16. As of 2006, 2 million children die every year from pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections, making it the leading cause of death of children under five years of age.
17. As of 2006, 1.6 million children die every year from Diarrhoeal disease, primarily from the resulting severe dehydration that can quickly result in the failure of vital organs in young children.
18. As of 2006, 1.1 million children die every year in Africa from malaria, making it the largest cause of death for children under five in Africa.
19. As of 2006, 657,000 children under the age of 15 are infected with HIV every day, most through transmission of the virus from mother to baby during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.
20. As of 2006, 500,000 children die every year from measles.
21. As of 2008, on the whole, people are healthier, wealthier, and live longer today than 30 years ago. If children were still dying at 1978 rates, there would have been 16.2 million dealths of children globally in 2006. In fact there were only 9.5 million such deaths. This difference of 6.7 million deaths is equivalent to 18,329 children’s lives being saved every day.
22. As of 2007, each year, more than 500,000 women die from treatable or preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
23. As of 2007, in sub-Saharan Africa, a woman’s risk of dying from complications from childbirth over the course of her lifetime is 1 in 16, compared to 1 in 3,800 in the developed world.
24. As of 2005, an estimated 15.2 million children had lost one or both parents to AIDS.
25. In 2008, net disbursements of official development assistance (ODA) reached $119.8 billion. That is equivalent to 0.3 per cent of developed countries’ combined national income.

Taken from
Ryan Allis's Blog, Thanks for the wonderful facts.

Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.

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I cried when I read this piece by Paolo Mangahas. He titled it “Between poverty and paradise“. I find it to be a honest, honest look at the reality of life in the Philippines.

Paolo writes about what’s ugly in the country, the things that we’d rather not talk about, or that we want to gloss over. Yet he also writes about what’s beautiful, what makes overseas Filipinos want to come back home, what draws us and warms us.

I cried for sadness over the harsh poverty in the streets. I also cried with pride and love for what and who the Filipino is.


Paolo ends his piece with this:

A beach is a beach and a volcano is a volcano anywhere in the world, but it’s the people who make the difference. I learned in that moment that I may not know the geographical features of my country all too well, but I sure know its heart and its soul because it’s who I am.

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