• Measuring Global Poverty
• Global Poverty by Region

"...We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want..."

 - United Nations Millennium Declaration

In 2000, Member States of the United Nations gathered to discuss the issues confronting the global community in the new millennium at the 2000 Millennium World Summit. At this summit, global poverty was identified as one of the primary issues challenging the rapidly changing world. A total of 191 Member States established the Millennium Development Goals ₍₁₎. These include the goal to reduce by half extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015. Currently, nearly half of the world—about 3 billion people—live on less than two dollars a day ₍₂₎ and nearly six million children under the age of five die each year as the result of hunger ₍₃₎. Poverty affects all aspects of a nation’s life. It affects the environment, health, education, housing, nutrition and agriculture to name but a few areas. It ultimately distorts individual values, disrupts families, and undermines communities.

Percentage population living on less than 1 dollar day ₍₈₎.

Measuring Global Poverty

Due to the enormity of the issue, various standards of living around the world, and differing definitions of poverty, measuring global poverty is an imperfect exercise. To provide a system of measurement, the World Bank has defined the international poverty line as U.S. $1 and $2 per day in 1993 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which adjusts for differences in the prices of goods and services between countries. The $1-per-day level is generally used for the least developed countries, primarily African; the $2-per-day level is used for middle income economies such as those of East Asia and Latin America. By this measure, in 2003, there were 1.2 billion people out of the developing world's 4.8 billion living on $1 per day, while another 2.8 billion were living on less than $2 per day ₍₄₎.

Learn more about measuring global poverty  (UN Statistics)

Use the World Bank's 'PovCal,' an interactive tool which allows you to replicate the calculations made by the World Bank’s researchers in estimating the extent of absolute poverty in the world, including the ability to calculate the poverty measures under different assumptions, such as various PPP levels, and to assemble the estimates using alternative country groupings or any set of individual countries.

Global Poverty by Region

Poverty afflicts every country in the world. However, the nature of poverty differs from region to region, and indeed, often from individual to individual. Below is a brief description of the scope and nature of poverty facing different regions of the world. Please note that this is not an inclusive list of regions or a complete description of the poverty that afflicts each respective region. Rather, it is meant to demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of poverty and the extent to which poverty differs from region to region.

Regions:

• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Southeast Asia
• Eastern Europe and the Balkans
• Latin America

The majority of the world's fifty Least Developed Countries (LDC) are primarily located in Sub-Saharan Africa.  While these countries represent 11% of the world population, they only account for 0.6% of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Despite the unprecedented growth of global wealth, millions of Africans live in abject poverty and squalor; accordingly, Africa as a region suffers from the most widespread poverty in the world by far. In 2001, Sub-Saharan Africa's GDP per capita shrank 14 percent from the decade prior. Between 1981 and 2001, poverty rose from 41% to 46%, and an additional 150 million people were living in extreme poverty. Nearly four million African children die before reaching the age of five, two-thirds of them from illnesses that cost little to treat. Malaria is the single biggest killer of African children; half of these deaths could be avoided if there were adequate access to diagnosis and medication, remedies that cost approximately U.S. $1 per dose ₍₅₎. The causes of poverty in Africa are numerous. They include poor governance, civil conflict, a weak investment climate, a lack of industrial infrastructure, poor agricultural production, inadequate education, capital flight, and high levels of foreign debt. These problems are compounded by climate change of increasing urgency and the long-standing AIDS epidemic, which infects nearly twenty-five million people in Africa. Over two million Africans will die this year from AIDS, and by 2010, every third child in Zambia will be an orphan ₍₇₎.       

Click here to see the U.N. statistical profiles of the world's fifty LDCs.

Click here to read Prime Minister Tony Blair's Africa Commission report, "Our Common Interest."

Click here to read the recent UN report on the affects of climate change to Africa and its relation to the standard of living in Africa.

With the expansion and development of international markets in recent years, overall poverty levels in Southeast Asia have fallen. China and India have led the recent progress, with both countries witnessing dramatic decreases in levels of extreme poverty over the last decade. However, these decreases in levels of extreme poverty have been accompanied by a general increase in overall income inequality. This inequality occurs especially between rural and urban areas of these countries. In some countries, such as the Philippines, this income gap has led to economic stagnation and civil unrest; such instability threatens to reverse previous gains in reducing poverty. Furthermore, many areas in the region suffer from overpopulation, which puts a strain on natural and financial resources. This, in turn, will leave many more people susceptible to the dangers of drought or economic decline. 

Click here to read the Asian Development Bank report, "Enhancing the Fight Against Poverty in Asia and the Pacific."   

Learn more about China's progress in reducing poverty and some of the challenges it continues to face. 

A child walks along the tiny pathway between houses in a Roma ghetto in Sofia. A recent UNICEF study found that child poverty remains high in the Balkans region.

Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union have witnessed a significant decrease in poverty since the Russian financial crisis of 1998-99. Almost 40 million people moved out of poverty from 1998-2003. Three key factors contributed to poverty reduction: growth in wages, growth in employment, and more adequate social transfers. But poverty and vulnerability persist: more than 60 million people live on less than $2 a day ₍₆₎. Factors contributing to poverty in the region include corruption, lack of foreign investment, political instability, and ethnic conflict. Nonetheless, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, about 18 million children in Southeast Europe and the former Soviet republics still live in utter deprivation.

Click here to read the World Bank's overview of poverty in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Click here to read more about the plight of children in Southeast Europe and former Soviet republics.

Click here to read the International Fund for Agricultural Development's report, "Regional Assessment of Rural Poverty in Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States."

The region's countries have made varying degrees of progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Chile, for example, using its 1990 levels of poverty as a baseline rate of 38.5%, has already reduced the number of Chileans living in extreme poverty to 18.8%, a 50 % reduction. On the other hand, Argentina has experienced significant increases in poverty over the last decade. In countries like Brazil, home to the widest income gap in the world, the transfer of five percent of the income of the wealthiest 20% of the population to the poorest 20% would reduce the poverty rate from 22% to 7%, according to the 2005 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Program. Poverty in many Latin American countries has additionally been affected by restrictive trade measures enacted by developed countries.

Read the World Bank's country-by-country analysis of poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Read the recent Economist editorial on Poverty in Latin America

Watch a video of the slums in Mexico City

Sources Cited
_{(1)United Nationshttp://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/relatedsites.html
(2) Global Issues.org
(3) CARE http://www.care.org/campaigns/childrenpoverty/facts.asp
(4) World Bank
(5) Tony Blair's Commission for Africa; "Our Common Interest"
(6) World Bankhttp://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTECA/Resources/ch1-poverty.pdf
(7) http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/indexafr.htm
(8) "Development Data Group, The World Bank. 2006. 2006 World Development Indicators. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Available online at: The World Development Indicators website."
(9) Getty Images;http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2006/10/19/feature-02
(10) BBC News; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/africa_darfur_journey/html/2.stm}