Sources: Fighting Poverty

Problem
Over 705 million people in the world live in extreme poverty and 71 million people will be pushed into it in 2020 [1,2]. People who live in poverty struggle to meet the most basic human needs like food, safe drinking water, shelter, healthcare and education [3]. Poverty denies people participation in society and security and it is a violation of human dignity [4]. The World Bank suggests that the rates of extreme poverty have fallen since 1990 globally, but the pace of reduction isn’t sustainable and it has slowed down [5].

Facts and Figures

  • Nearly half of the world’s population lives on less than $5.50 a day [6]. 

  • Extreme poverty remains high in low-income countries [7]. 

  • More than 90% of deaths due to disasters occur in low and middle-income countries, indicating a link between poverty and death [8,9]. 

  • There are 122 women aged 25 to 34 living in poverty for every 100 men of the same age group [10]. 

  • Globally, almost 385 million children live in extreme poverty and undernutrition causes 3.1 million child deaths annually [11,12].

Solution
The first steps to eradicate poverty are to understand its root causes and to implement visionary policies. Sustained and inclusive economic growth, rising productivity, raising awareness, job-creation, promoting social inclusion and eliminating gender inequality are among crucial actions to fight poverty [13-19]. By including monitoring and evaluation programmes, we learn which poverty reduction strategies work and can develop programs to counteract the root causes [20].

Sources

  1. United Nations - No Poverty (infographic) 
  2. Global Extreme Poverty (link)
  3. The Sustainable Development Goals, 2019 (report)  
  4. Worldbank - Poverty and Inequality (link) 
  5. Worldbank - Year in review, 2019 (link)
  6. Worldbank - Nearly Half the World Lives on Less than $5.50 a Day (link) 
  7. United Nations - No Poverty (link)
  8. United Nations - No Poverty (infographic) 
  9. UNDDR - Poverty & Death: Disaster mortality 1996-2015 (report) 
  10. United Nations - SDG 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere (link) 
  11. UNICEF - Child Poverty (link) 
  12. World Hunger - Facts and statistics (link) 
  13. Sustainable Development Goals - Sustained and inclusive economic growth (link) 
  14. United Nations - Decent Work and Economic Growth (link) 
  15. United Nations - International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (link) 
  16. United Nations - Employment and Decent Work (link) 
  17. United Nations - Social Inclusion (link)
  18. United Nations - Inequality (link)
  19. Reliefweb - The top 9 causes of global poverty (press release) 
  20. Worldbank - Going Above And Beyond To End Poverty: New Ways Of Measuring Poverty Shed New Light On The Challenges Ahead (link) 

Other sources: 

  • Worldbank: an online analysis tool for global poverty monitoring (research report) 
  • Worldbank: Poverty and Equity Data (link) 
  • United Nations - No Poverty Indicators (link) 
  • United Nations - Ending Poverty (link)
  • Worldbank - measuring poverty (link) 
  • Worldbank Blogs - The number of extremely poor people continues to rise in Sub-Saharan Africa (link) 
  • Our World in Data - As the world’s poorest economies are stagnating half a billion are expected to be in extreme poverty in 2030 (link)