Poverty: The Big Picture

To break out of poverty—that’s the dream of millions of young people around the world. And it’s a dream that’s within reach, if we all lend a hand.

Poverty happens when people don’t have what they need to meet their basic needs, including food, shelter and clean water. Today, almost half the world—that’s close to three billion people—struggle to survive on less than $2 a day. More than 815 million people in developing countries are hungry.

If you’re living in poverty, it’s difficult to plan the future. When you’re sick, hungry or don’t believe that your dreams are possible, it’s hard to do well in class—that’s if you even get the chance to go to school. When young people break out of poverty, they can begin to imagine their lives as they’ll be tomorrow, one year down the road or even after graduation.

Fighting Poverty: We Can Do it Together

Our world is truly a global village. When you buy something as simple as a T-shirt, the power of your purchase ripples across oceans to affect other people’s lives. By buying goods that are produced ethically in other countries, we ensure the people who made those goods are able to meet their own needs.

Did you know that if wealthier countries—those countries considered “developed” by the United Nations—contributed 0.7 percent of their annual wealth to official development assistance, there would be enough funding to meet all the Millennium Development Goals? So far, only five countries—Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden—have achieved this target set out by the United Nations.

It’s up to young people like you—who care about making the world a more equitable place—to help children in the developing world break out of poverty. The solution is within our reach!

Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals: Targets We Can Meet

There are two Millennium Development Goals that relate to poverty. They address hunger as a major barrier to succeeding in life and look at the specific ways poverty hurts children. Overall, these goals show that even though poverty affects about half the world, it’s a state that’s unacceptable and needs to change.

Goal: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger

What We Need To Do

Cut the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and suffering from hunger in half.

The Challenge

• Today, more than one billion people around the world live on less than $1 a day, and about 2.7 billion struggle to live on less than $2 a day. This isn’t enough money to meet basic needs.
• 815 million people in developing regions are undernourished, which means they aren’t getting the basic nutrients they need to be healthy—that’s enough people to fill the largest NFL stadium almost 9,000 times!

Goal: Reduce Child Mortality

h3.What We Need To Do

Reduce the under-five child mortality rate by two-thirds.

The Challenge

• Almost 11 million children under the age of five die each year from preventable causes, like AIDS, diarrhea, malaria, measles and pneumonia. Ninety-eight percent of these children live in the developing world.

Causes: Why Does Poverty Exist?

It’s almost impossible to imagine a person living on $1 a day, but this is the reality for one billion people—that’s about 15 percent of the world’s population. Why do some people have so little, while others have so much?

Major root causes of poverty:

• Lack of access to education: children need to learn basic skills, like literacy, in order to get ahead.
• Health issues, like HIV/AIDS and malaria: these are challenges to individuals and to countries as a whole as they struggle to deal with epidemics.
• Hunger: when people are desperate just to find food each day, it’s impossible to plan for the future.
• War and conflict: through war, communities are destroyed, schools close down, parents are killed and children are left with little opportunity.

These are the most obvious and common causes of poverty. But there are many smaller causes and individual situations that cause poverty, like the death of a parent or caregiver, a natural disaster or a drought that might prevent food crops from growing.

All these causes boil down to one major challenge: some people, whatever their individual reason, lack the basic things they need to survive.

North America: In a Position to Help

Every day, Americans buy 88,168 iPods, 2,400,000 Whoppers and 500,000 Twinkies. These three items adds up to millions of dollars spent each day.

Think about it: many children in sub-Saharan Africa live each day on the change you need to buy one Twinkie. In fact, North America is one of the wealthiest regions in the world, which is why we’re in a position to help other regions where people are struggling.

But even though most North Americans live way beyond their basic needs, poverty is still a reality for many. In the United States, 17 percent of children are living in poverty. This proportion is about the same in many developed countries, including England and Canada.

We are fortunate enough to have services like food banks and homeless shelters that help many people in need. But in other parts of the world, these services don’t exist and hungry children are left to fend for themselves.

Global Status: Where the World is Now

Poverty happens around the globe, and isn’t acceptable anywhere, but the reality is that the effects and severity differ. People in developing countries experience poverty on a different scale: it’s much worse. In developing countries, instead of the exception, poverty is the norm. Most people are struggling to survive.

Children are not just coming to school hungry; many don’t come to school, period. If you are poor and sick, there are no free clinics to help you. If you are homeless, there are no shelters to take you in for the night. You simply suffer.

These statistics tell the story:

• One-third of deaths—about 18 million people a year, or 50,000 per day—are due to poverty-related causes.
• 800 million people go to bed hungry every day.
• Someone dies of starvation every 3.6 seconds. Most of these deaths are children under the age of five.
• In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, half the children under age five are malnourished.
• 30,000 children under five die each day. Most of these children live in developing countries and die from a disease or a combination of diseases that could be prevented or treated.
• Half of these under-five deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, even though the region is home to only 20 percent of the world’s young children.

A Story You Should Hear about Poverty

Maria’s Story

Take Action Against Poverty

There are lots of actions you can take to help end poverty in the developing world. Try these as a start.