Covenant News
Facts About Poverty
WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 27, 2005) - Today, our world houses 6.39 billion people. An estimated five billion people live in the developing world where:- Some 1.2 billion people - more than one in five on Earth - currently live below the international poverty line, earning less than $1 per day.
- 815 million people are undernourished - they consume less than the minimum amount of calories essential for sound health and growth.
- 11 million children younger than age five die every year, more than half of them from hunger-related causes.
- 113 million children are without access to basic education – 60 percent of them are girls.
- More than 38 million people (including nearly three million children) are living with HIV/AIDS - 92.8 percent of all HIV infections worldwide.
- Every day in Africa, 6,300 people die and another 8,500 contract the HIV virus - 1,400 of whom are newborn babies infected during childbirth or by their mothers' milk.
- More than 12 million children in Africa have lost at least one parent to HIV/AIDS; this total will reach 18 million by 2010.
In the past 30 years, significant progress has been made in the fight against global poverty, as reflected in the following statistics provided by the United Nations Development Program:
- During the last 15 years, deaths of children five years of age and under have declined by 28 percent.
- Between 1991 and 2001, the number of people living in extreme poverty decreased by 130 million.
- An additional 8 percent of the population had access to clean drinking water and an additional 15 percent had access to sanitation services in 2001 than did in 1991.
- Illiteracy was cut nearly in half to 25 percent worldwide since the 1960's.
"We have the opportunity in the coming decade to cut world poverty by half," states the United Nations Millennium Project Report to the Secretary General. "Billions more people could enjoy the fruits of the global economy," the report continues. "Tens of millions of lives can be saved. The practical solutions exist. The political framework is established. And for the first time, the cost is utterly affordable . . . all that is needed is action."
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