25 Sobering Statistics On Global Poverty That Might Upset You

• published: 24 Dec 2013
• views: 143388

Everyone knows there is poverty in the world. But what exactly does that mean? These are 25 sobering statistics on global poverty that might upset you. https://twitter.com/list25 https://www.facebook.com/list25 http://list25.com Check out the text version too! - http://list25.com/25-sobering-statistics-on-global-poverty-that-might-upset-you Here's a preview: At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 per day To put things into perspective, the top 20% of the world's population accounts for three quarters of the world's income Half of the world's population accounts for only 5% of the world's income According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die every day due to poverty Nearly one third of children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted Last year, about 70 million children of primary school age were not in school Nearly a billion people celebrated the coming of the 21st century without being able to read a book or sign their name Preventable diseases like Malaria afflict nearly 500 million people every year Africa alone accounts for roughly 1 million deaths due to Malaria annually. Most of them are children Speaking of children, there are 2.2 billion children in the world. Half of them live in extreme poverty Over 1 billion people have inadequate access to water and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Many times this means no separation of drinking water and toilet water. That is why 1.8 million children die every year of diarrhoea Approximately half of the world's population now lives in cities and about one third of those in the cities live in slum conditions In fact, slum growth is outpacing urban growth by a frighteningly large margin One quarter of humanity lives without electricity The 7 richest people in the world make more than the poorest 41 countries combined (roughly 567 million people) .14% of the world population own over 80% of the world's private financial wealth. The vast majority of that wealth has managed to avoid all income and estate taxes, either by the countries where it has been invested or where it comes from. For every $1 in aid that a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment. The poorer the country, the more likely it is that the debt repayments are being extracted directly from the people who neither contracted the loans nor received any money In 1998 $8 billion dollars was spent on cosmetics in the United States, $11 billion was spent on ice cream in the European Union, $17 billion was spent on pet food in Europe and the US, $100 billion was spent on alcohol in Europe, $400 billion was spent on narcotics globally, and $780 billion was spent on militaries around the world. In the same year $6 billion was spent on achieving basic education for all, $9 billion was spent on basic water and sanitation for all, and $13 billion was spent on basic health and nutrition for all If you are reading this list then you are in the top 30% of the world's population when it comes to poverty and wealth With new technologies we now grow enough food to feed 10 billion people or 1.5 times the world population. The problem is that most of the world can't afford to buy that food. If the world spent less than 1% of what it spends on weapons all the previously mentioned issues would be fixed