Learn more about Poverty

What is poverty, anyway?

Poverty is a condition in which a person or a community lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being. These essentials include clean drinking water, adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. In 2005, 1.4 billion people were living on less than $1.25 a day, which is the definition of extreme poverty.¹

A boy in Jakarta, Indonesia finding a toy in the dump.

Who is most affected?

Women are more than twice as likely as men to be living in poverty. Women perform 66% of the world’s work, produce 50% of the food, but only earn 10% of the income and own 1% of the property.²

Almost 75% of people worldwide in extreme poverty live in rural areas.³ Lack of economic opportunities and rising food prices have an especially large impact on rural populations. Climate change and the growing of crops for biofuels has decreased the supply of basic crops to the world’s poor.⁴ For example, cassava (shown below) makes up over half of the diet of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2009, the price of cassava increased by 61%⁵, which led to many Congolese going hungry.

Cassava.

Scarcity of food can also lead to conflict. Unrest linked to high food price has occurred in a number of countries, including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.⁶ In Haiti, four people were killed and 20 people were wounded in food riots over a four-day span in 2008.⁷

Where are consequences felt?

In a global economy, countries and their citizens are interconnected. The economic downturn of 2008-2009 in the developed world has led to an estimated 55 to 90 million more people living in extreme poverty worldwide.

Poverty is most widespread and severe in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). These are countries where: 50% of the population lives on less than $1 a day; levels of health, nutrition, and education have been consistently low; and where natural disasters have led to agricultural instability.⁸ See the map of the LDCs, below.⁹

Least Developed Countries.

Why is poverty important?

While we are all interconnected, wealth is not equally distributed amongst all peoples. There is an increasing gap between the world’s poorest and richest peoples.  In the years 1990-2000, over 70% of countries experienced an increase in their level of income inequality.¹⁰

Poverty influences and is influenced by many factors: health, education, employment, conflict, climate change, and food/water security. Both humans and the environment suffer when poverty exists. Two areas of particular concern are biodiversity and conflict.

Biodiversity is declining as a result of poverty, since the poor depend heavily on agriculture, grazing, and hunting to support themselves. ¹¹ Climate change, conflict, population growth, and conversion of forests into farmland have decreased biodiversity, often irreversibly so.¹² Education, outreach, and development money are necessary to combat biodiversity loss. One example of a successful venture is the creation of conservation areas that allow only the harvesting of natural products not harming the ecosystem, like honey and herbs. Ecotourism is another benefit of conservation areas, as long as communities have the infrastructure necessary to host tourists.¹³

A campaign against climate change and its effects on the poor.

Conflict is connected with poverty, since the state of being deprived of basic needs can lead to frustration and ultimately violence.¹⁴ A lack of economic and educational opportunities, as well as the destruction of the environment, leaves the poor without livelihoods and more likely to join an armed group like a militia.¹⁵ A prime example of the mobilization of poor young men was in the beginning stages of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Citations

¹ http://devdata.worldbank.org/atlas-mdg/

² http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/women_poverty_economics/facts_figures.php

³ http://www.unfpa.org/upload/lib_pub_file/191_filename_PDS08.pdf, page 30

⁴ http://earthtrends.wri.org/povlinks/id.php

⁵ http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPOVERTY/Resources/335642-
1210859591030/FINAL_Food_Price_Watch_Feb2010.pdf, page 2

⁶ http://www.ifad.org/operations/food/ceb.htm

⁷ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7331921.stm

⁸ http://www.stwr.org/poverty-inequality/un-recession-adds-6-percent-to-ranks
-of-global-poor.html

⁹ http://www.unohrlls.org/UserFiles/File/Publications/progress%20in%20LDCs.pdf, 
page 5, 8-9 (maps)

¹⁰ http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/download/world08.pdf, pages 11 and 12

¹¹ http://www.greenfacts.org/en/ecosystems/index.htm

¹² http://www.maweb.org/documents/document.297.aspx.pdf, page 835

¹³ http://assets.panda.org/downloads/mellor.pdf, page 20

¹⁴ http://www.parlcent.ca/povertyreduction/seminar1_e.pdf, page 9

¹⁵ http://waterwiki.net/images/6/68/Livelihood_conflicts_linking_poverty_and_
environment_as_causes_of_conflict.pdf