25 Facts on Global Poverty

25 Sourced & Verifiable Facts on Global Poverty

To make it on this list a statistic must be from a trusted primary source with a clear “as of” date. All statistics are sourced and cited at the bottom of the page.

1. As of 2008, 79.8% of humanity lives on less than $10 per day. (5.15 billon people) (1)
2. As of 2008, 48.6% of humanity lives on less than $2.50 per day. (3.14 billion people) (1)
3. As of 2008, 40.2% of humanity lives on less than $2 per day. (2.60 billion people) (1)
4. As of 2008, 21.7% of humanity lives on less than $1.25 per day (1.40 billion people) (1)
5. As of 2008, 13.6% of humanity lives on less than $1 per day. (880 million people) (1)
6. As of 2008, the world’s richest 20% consume 76.6% of private consumption (1)
7. As of 2008, the world’s richest 10% consume 59.9% of private consumption (1)
8. As of 2009, 24,956 children under 5 years old die on average each day in developing countires (2)
9. As of 2006, access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%. (3)
10. As of 2007, every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide. (4)
11. As of 2007, 1.6 billion people — a quarter of humanity — live without electricity (5)
12. As of 2007, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined. (6, 7,
13. As of 2009, the poverty line in the USA for a single individual is drawn at $10,830 per annum or $29.67 per day. (9)
14. As of 2006, 10.6 million children die every year from causes that are easily preventable – equal to 29,000 children every day (10)
15. As of 2006, half of these deaths 29,000 daily deaths of children occur in just six countries – China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Pakistan (10)
16. As of 2006, 2 million children die every year from pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections, making it the leading cause of death of children under five years of age (11)
17. As of 2006, 1.6 million children die every year from Diarrhoeal disease, primarily from the resulting severe dehydration that can quickly result in the failure of vital organs in young children (11)
18. As of 2006, 1.1 million children die every year in Africa from malaria, making it the largest cause of death for children under five in Africa. (11)
19. As of 2006, 657,000 children under the age of 15 are infected with HIV every day, most through transmission of the virus from mother to baby during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding (11)
20. As of 2006, 500,000 children die every year from measles. (11)
21. As of 2008, on the whole, people are healthier, wealthier, and live longer today than 30 years ago. If children were still dying at 1978 rates, there would have been 16.2 million dealths of children globally in 2006. In fact there were only 9.5 million such deaths. This difference of 6.7 million deaths is equivalent to 18,329 children’s lives being saved every day. (12)
22. As of 2007, each year, more than 500,000 women die from treatable or preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. (13)
23. As of 2007, in sub-Saharan Africa, a woman’s risk of dying from complications from childbirth over the course of her lifetime is 1 in 16, compared to 1 in 3,800 in the developed world. (13)
24. As of 2005, an estimated 15.2 million children had lost one or both parents to AIDS (14)
25. In 2008, net disbursements of official development assistance (ODA) reached $119.8 billion. That is equivalent to 0.3 per cent of developed countries’ combined national income. (15)

Global Poverty Facts in Graphs

Source: UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, p. 51

Source: UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, p. 52

Sources:

1. World Development Indicators 2008, World Bank, August 2008
2. UNICEF State of the World’s Children, 2009, From p. 121, Statistical Tables, Table 1 Basic Indicators, Summary Indicators, Developing Countries “Annual Number of Under 5 Deaths (Thousands), 2007 – 9109″ We arrived at 24,956 deaths of children under 5 per day by taking the 9,109,000 total deaths per year for children under 5 in developing countries and dividing by 365.
3. 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, pp.6, 7, 35
4. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25.
5. UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, p.44
6. World Bank Key Development Data & Statistics, World Bank
7. Luisa Kroll and Allison Fass, The World’s Richest People, Forbes
8. World Bank’s list of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (41 countries)
9. www.hhs.gov“. The 2009 HHS Poverty Guidelines. http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml.
10. UNICEF Canada 50 Year Progress Report 2006, Overview Sheet
11. UNICEF Canada 50 Year Progress Report 2006
12. World Health Organization, World Health Report 2008, p. 14
13. UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, p.16
14. UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, p.20
15. UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, p. 48

Special Thanks:

Thank you to the site GlobalIssues.org for their work in collecting verifiable facts and statistics on major global issues. Their page “Poverty Facts & Stats” was of great help in compiling these statistics. Thank you also to the World Bank, UNICEF, UNICEF Cananda, and UNDP for vital reports neccessary for the compilation of these statistics. The United Nations report “The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009” was also particularly helpful.