Facts about Poverty

Poverty can be defined as "a state of having little or no money, or negligible material possessions." Another excellent definition of poverty was given by Mollie Orshansky (developer of poverty measurements for United States of America). Orshansky states: "being poor, is being deprived of the goods, services and pleasures which others around us, take for granted."

Living below the Poverty Line

To define poverty, governments all over the world subscribe to the concept of poverty line. The poverty line is the minimum daily income that facilitates the survival of any person. The means of income, however, have to be legal and through economic activity. Hence, illegal income, donations, and income through begging is not considered as an income. The poverty line of every nation is defined on the basis of its national income, gross domestic produce and the net national product. The World Bank has also defined a poverty line that is applicable globally. The current international poverty line which is $1.25 per day, enables us to measure the volume of poverty globally. The international poverty line has revealed some shocking facts about poverty. The total population of all the countries, put together, is about $6.5. billion. Out of these about 3 billion people earn less than $1.25 per day (the international poverty line).

Developed and Developing Nations

According to the level of development, the nations of the world are divided into two categories, the developing and the developed nations. The population in the developed nations that is affected by poverty is relatively less, as compared to that of the developing nations.

Effects of Poverty

The first effect of poverty on any person, is not being able to avail the basic necessities for survival which are food, clothing, shelter, hygiene and education. In the same way, the biggest effect of poverty on a section of population is seen, when the population is deprived of these basic necessities. Out of the five basic necessities, food and hygiene are the most important for survival.

Food: Food is necessary for survival and is the most basic requirement to keep the human body working. However, the phenomenon of poverty has deprived people of food. Recent census reveals that about 852 million people went hungry in 2007-2008. Another horrifying fact is that 25,000 children die every day due to starvation. About 28% children from developing nations suffer from malnutrition and starvation. Hunger is the most heinous effect of poverty.

Hygiene: One of the worst effects of poverty is living in unhygienic conditions. The population affected by poverty rarely has access to medical facility. This also leads to unawareness about hygiene. It must be noted that due to this reason, there are about 40 million people around the world, who are affected by HIV/AIDS. In one year alone, about 350 to 500 million people are affected by malaria, which also causes 1 million deaths.

Hygiene also includes proper sanitation facilities. It is estimated that about 660 million people live without proper sanitation facilities. Due to the lack of proper sanitation facilities, many diseases spread rapidly across the population. Some of the prominent diseases are diarrhea, which cause about 1.8 million deaths among children annually. 1.1 billion people throughout the world, do not have the facility of clean and safe water.

Children affected by Poverty

Children suffer the worst from poverty because they are unable to overcome this nightmare, even if they do overcome poverty financially. Here are some facts regarding poverty affected children.

• There are about 640 million children who are shelterless.
• 400 million children do have any kind of access to a safe source of drinking water.
• 270 million children cannot avail any kind of health service.
• About 121 million children cannot avail education due to poverty.

An anonymous report on poverty says, "Less than a percent of what the world spent every year on weapons and useless destructive researches, was needed to put every child in a school and give him a childhood (by the year 2000), and yet it did not happen."

Poverty is one of the longest existing phenomenon that will take a long time to be completely eradicated. Efforts by the United Nations, governments and NGOs, are in progress to abolish the evils of poverty.