Poverty Around the World

World Poverty is a Disaster

Billions of people around the world live in extreme poverty. Nearly 10 percent of the world's population. That's almost 1 billion people living below the World Bank poverty line of $1.90 per day.

And almost half the world (nearly 4 billion people) lives with a household income below $2.50 a day.

The extremely poor live without support, on the sidelines, watching economic growth and prosperity pass them by. They are shunned by the world economy. They live lives abundant in scarcity. Without enough food, access to clean water, or proper sanitation. Without access to safe shelter, health care, or education.

Even the environment attacks poor people.

When nature strikes, the world's poor suffer the most.

More than 1.35 million people have been killed by earthquakes, hurricane, tsunamis, etc. over the past 20 years. The world's poorest countries bore the brunt of the devastation.

In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami killed 230,000 people. All of them were in poor countries — low- and middle-income countries* such as: Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India.

In 2011, a similar magnitude earthquake spawned a tsunami that struck high-income Japan, and its waves were 30 feet taller. The number of people who died?

Nineteen thousand.

Poverty was the difference in the death toll.

The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 killed 223,000 people. Equally forceful earthquakes hit Chile and New Zealand later that same year. Five hundred people died in Chile. No deaths occurred in New Zealand.

Poverty caused the difference.

Global Poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), adopted in 2015 by the United Nations, are the most comprehensive and ambitious poverty reduction plan the world has embarked upon.

They expand the scope of the world community’s previous efforts to end extreme poverty and eradicate the burden poverty places on the world population — child malnutrition, gender inequality, unclean water, improper sanitation, poor health and well-being, and inequalities in education, economics, energy, justice and sustainability.

This burden, the burden of poverty, is literally carried on the heads and on the backs of the poor.

But the burden poverty places on society and individuals isn’t just economic or physical. Measuring poverty this way overlooks the other types of poverty oppressing the marginalized. Poverty causes the poor to suffer emotionally and spiritually as well.

That's why the Sustainable Development Goals aren't just about ending poverty around the world. They're about protecting the planet and ensuring all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

Building a sustainable future means finding ways to meet the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It requires a unified, collaborative and global approach that isn't bound by cultures, conditions or continents.

Because a life of poverty means the poor carry a shade of poverty in their hearts and wear it etched on their faces. They become shells of unfulfilled potential and possibility.

Efforts to eliminate inequality and extreme poverty in the world have gradually lowered poverty rates in many low- and middle-income countries in South Asia, and Latin America. But not everyone has been helped.

According to the World Data Lab, poverty in Africa is increasing in 16 countries. Additionally 27 of the world’s 28 poorest countries are in Sub-saharan Africa, and each has a poverty rate of over 30 percent.¹ While the absolute number of people living in global poverty has decreased over the last several decades, in Sub-saharan Africa, the number has increased, and substantially so.

In working with kids in poverty all around the world, we see poverty trying to steal joy, destroy dignity and put hope to death. We see poverty trying to enslave children and sustain helplessness for generations. And we see the shells of people it conquers.

But poverty doesn’t always win.

Not even close.

Our pictures of poverty show that joy, hope and dignity still bloom in the hearts of the poor.