POVERTY: World Statistics

National estimates of the percentage of the population falling below the poverty line are based on surveys of sub-groups, with the results weighted by the number of people in each group. Definitions of poverty vary considerably among nations. For example, rich nations generally employ more generous standards of poverty than poor nations.
Country Population below poverty line(%)
Afghanistan 36% (FY08/09)
Albania 12.5% (2008 est.)
Algeria 23% (2006 est.)
Angola 40.5% (2006 est.)
Argentina : note: data are based on private estimates (2010)
Armenia 26.5% (2006 est.)
Azerbaijan 11% (2009 est.)
Bangladesh 40% (2010 est.)
Belarus 27.1% (2003 est.)
Belgium 15.2% (2007 est.)
Belize 43% (2010 est.)
Benin 37.4% (2007 est.)
Bolivia 30.3% : note: based on percent of population living on less than the international standard of $2/day (2009 est.)
Bosnia and Herzegovina 18.6% (2007 est.)
Botswana 30.3% (2003)
Brazil 26% (2008)
Bulgaria 21.8% (2008
Burkina Faso 46.4% (2004)
Burma 32.7% (2007 est.)
Burundi 68% (2002 est.)
Cambodia 31% (2007 est.)
Cameroon 48% (2000 est.)
Canada 9.4% : note: this figure is the Low Income Cut-Off (LICO), a calculation that results in higher figures than found in many comparable economies; Canada does not have an official poverty line (2008)
Chad 80% (2001 est.)
Chile 11.5% (2009)
China 2.8% : note: 21.5 million rural population live below the official "absolute poverty" line (approximately $90 per year); an additional 35.5 million rural population live above that level but below the official "low income" line (approximately $125 per year) (2007)
Colombia 45.5% (2009)
Congo, Democratic Republic of the 71% (2006 est.)
Costa Rica 16% (2006 est.)
Cote d'Ivoire 42% (2006 est.)
Croatia 17% (2008)
Denmark 12.1% (2007)
Djibouti 42% (2007 est.)
Dominica 30% (2002 est.)
Dominican Republic 42.2% (2004)
Ecuador 33.1% (June 2010)
Egypt 20% (2005 est.)
El Salvador 37.8% (2009 est.)
Eritrea 50% (2004 est.)
Estonia 19.7% (2008)
Ethiopia 38.7% (FY05/06 est.)
European Union note - see individual country entries of member states
Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) NA%
Faroe Islands NA%
Fiji 25.5% (FY90/91)
Finland NA%
France 6.2% (2004)
French Polynesia NA%
Gabon NA%
Gambia, The NA%
Gaza Strip 70% (2009 est.)
Georgia 31% (2006)
Germany 15.5% (2010 est.)
Ghana 28.5% (2007 est.)
Gibraltar NA%
Greece 20% (2009 est.)
Greenland 9.2% (2007 est.)
Grenada 32% (2000)
Guam 23% (2001 est.)
Guatemala 56.2% (2004 est.)
Guernsey NA%
Guinea 47% (2006 est.)
Guinea-Bissau NA%
Guyana NA%
Haiti 80% (2003 est.)
Holy See (Vatican City) NA%
Honduras 65% (2010)
Hong Kong NA%
Hungary 13.9% (2010)
Iceland NA%
India 25% (2007 est.)
Indonesia 13.33% (2010)
Iran 18% (2007 est.)
Iraq 25% (2008 est.)
Ireland 5.5% (2009 est.)
Isle of Man NA%
Israel 23.6%
note: Israel's poverty line is $7.30 per person per day (2007)
Italy NA%
Jamaica 16.5% (2009 est.)
Japan 15.7% (2007)
note: Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) press release, 20 October 2009
Jersey NA%
Jordan 14.2% (2002)
Kazakhstan 8.2% (2009)
Kenya 50% (2000 est.)
Kiribati NA%
Korea, North NA%
Korea, South 15% (2006 est.)
Kosovo 30% (2010 est.)
Kuwait NA%
Kyrgyzstan 40% (2004 est.)
Laos 26% (2010 est.)
Latvia NA%
Lebanon 28% (1999 est.)
Lesotho 49% (1999)
Liberia 80% (2000 est.)
Libya NA
note: About one-third of Libyans live at or below the national poverty line
Liechtenstein NA%
Lithuania 4% (2003)
Luxembourg NA%
Macau NA%
Macedonia 28.7% (2008)
Madagascar 50% (2004 est.)
Malawi 53% (2004)
Malaysia 3.6% (2007 est.)
Maldives 16% (2008)
Mali 36.1% (2005 est.)
Malta NA%
Marshall Islands NA%
Mauritania 40% (2004 est.)
Mauritius 8% (2006 est.)
Mexico 18.2%
note: based on food-based definition of poverty; asset based poverty amounted to more than 47% (2008)
Micronesia, Federated States of 26.7% (2000)
Moldova 26.3% (2009)
Monaco NA%
Mongolia 36.1% (2004)
Montenegro 7% (2007 est.)
Montserrat NA%
Morocco 15% (2007 est.)
Mozambique 70% (2001 est.)
Namibia 55.8%
note: the UNDP's 2005 Human Development Report indicated that 34.9% of the population live on $1 per day and 55.8% live on $2 per day (2005 est.)
Nauru NA%
Nepal 24.7% (2008)
Netherlands 10.5% (2005)
New Caledonia NA%
New Zealand NA%
Nicaragua 48% (2005)
Niger 63% (1993 est.)
Nigeria 70% (2007 est.)
Niue NA%
Northern Mariana Islands NA%
Norway NA%
Oman NA%
Pakistan 24% (FY05/06 est.)
Palau NA%
Panama 25.6% (2010 est.)
Papua New Guinea 37% (2002 est.)
Paraguay 18.8% (2009 est.)
Peru 34.8% (2009)
Philippines 32.9% (2006 est.)
Poland 17% (2003 est.)
Portugal 18% (2006)
Puerto Rico NA%
Qatar NA%
Romania 25% (2005 est.)
Russia 13.1% (2009)
Rwanda 60% (2001 est.)
Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha NA%
Saint Kitts and Nevis NA%
Saint Lucia NA%
Saint Pierre and Miquelon NA%
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines NA%
Samoa NA%
San Marino NA%
Sao Tome and Principe 54% (2004 est.)
Saudi Arabia NA%
Senegal 54% (2001 est.)
Serbia 8.8% (2010 est.)
Seychelles NA%
Sierra Leone 70.2% (2004)
Singapore NA%
Slovakia 21% (2002)
Slovenia 12.3% (2008)
Solomon Islands NA%
Somalia NA%
South Africa 50% (2000 est.)
Spain 19.8% (2005)
Sri Lanka 23% (2008 est.)
Sudan 40% (2004 est.)
Suriname 70% (2002 est.)
Swaziland 69% (2006)
Sweden NA%
Switzerland 6.9% (2010)
Syria 11.9% (2006 est.)
Taiwan 1.16% (2010 est.)
Tajikistan 53% (2009 est.)
Tanzania 36% (2002 est.)
Thailand 9.6% (2006 est.)
Timor-Leste 42% (2003 est.)
Togo 32% (1989 est.)
Tokelau NA%
Tonga 24% (FY03/04)
Trinidad and Tobago 17% (2007 est.)
Tunisia 3.8% (2005 est.)
Turkey 17.11% (2008)
Turkmenistan 30% (2004 est.)
Turks and Caicos Islands NA%
Tuvalu NA%
Uganda 35% (2001 est.)
Ukraine 35% (2009)
United Arab Emirates 19.5% (2003)
United Kingdom 14% (2006 est.)
United States 12% (2004 est.)
Uruguay 20.9% of households (2009)
Uzbekistan 26% (2008 est.)
Vanuatu NA%
Venezuela 37.9% (2005 est.)
Vietnam 10.6% (2010 est.)
Virgin Islands 28.9% (2002)
Wallis and Futuna NA%
West Bank 46% (2007 est.)
Western Sahara NA%
Yemen 45.2% (2003)
Zambia 64% (2006)
Zimbabwe 68% (2004)

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2046.html

POVERTY: Global Poverty Shifting Toward Middle Income, Failed States

Freakonomics : 05/24/2011
 Photo: Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak

A new report from The Brookings Institution examining global poverty rates since 2005 notes two primary trends: poor people are increasingly found in middle-income countries and in fragile states.

The report notes the obvious success of the first trend:
Over the past decade, the number of countries classified as low-income has fallen by two fifths, from 66 to 40, while the number of middle-income countries has ballooned to over 100. This means 26 poor countries have grown sufficiently rich to surpass the middle-income threshold. Among those countries that have recently made the leap into middle-income status are a group of countries – India, Nigeria and Pakistan – containing large populations of poor people. It is their “graduation” which has brought about the apparent shift in poverty from the low-income to middle-income country category.

And the troubling failure of the other:
Unlike the exodus from the low-income country grouping, too few countries are succeeding at breaking out of fragile status. According to at least one classification, the number of fragile states across the world has risen from 28 in 2006 to 37 today. Furthermore, in a number of critical countries, the degree of fragility is increasing. Countries that remain locked in fragility are unsurprisingly not recording the same rates of poverty reduction achieved by stable countries. Rapid poverty reduction is directly undermined by the failure of the state to perform its core functions.
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/global-poverty-shifting-toward-middle-income-failed-states/

POVERTY: The World Bank is recommending a major difference in the way aid is spent.

April 11, 2011:  David Loyn : BBC international development correspondent

Poverty rates are 20% higher in countries hit by violence, so aid should target violence, the Bank says Food prices at 'dangerous levels'
The World Bank is recommending a major difference in the way aid is spent.
A quarter of the world's population live in states affected by conflict.
In a report released on Monday, the World Bank says that there should be far more focus on building stable government, and on justice and police, than on health and education.
The report says if there is not a major refocusing of aid in this direction, then other targets on poverty, health and education will not be reached.
There is far more spent on alleviating the effects of conflict than preventing it from breaking out, and conflicts tend to be repeated.
Ninety percent of recent civil wars occurred in countries that had already had a civil war in the last 30 years.
The report found that cycles of violence were hard to stop, for example in South Africa and Central America.
In Guatemala, twice as many people are dying now at the hands of criminals than died in the civil war in the 1980s.
Poverty rates are 20 percentage points higher in countries affected by violence, but up to now, the World Bank found, there had been too little focus on ending corruption or reforming state institutions and justice systems. For instance, reform of justice was not one of the Millennium Development Goals.

Police, not hospitals
The report's author Sarah Cliffe says this is the greatest development challenge facing the world.
"It's much easier for countries to get help with their militaries than it is with their police forces or justice systems, and much easier for them to get help with growth, health or education than it is with employment," she says.
"Our analysis would indicate that that should change."

A lot of this thinking is not new.
Britain is already refocusing its aid towards conflict states.
If other countries do the same it would mark a fundamental shift, where spending money on good police becomes a higher priority than good hospitals or schools
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13032938

POVERTY: Measuring poverty and gender disparity

March 14, 2011 Dr Scott Wisor is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Australian National University and a Research Associate with the Development Policy Centre.


Poverty measurement is important. It is used to advocate for scarce resources, to allocate those resources, to determine access to entitlement programs, to evaluate projects, programs, and institutional designs, to provide the basis for anti-poverty analysis, and to resolve key debates.
According to World Bank statistics, between 1990 and 2005, global poverty fell from 42% to 25%, or from 1.8 billion to 1.4 billion people. The World Bank’s International Poverty Line is currently set at US$1.25 2005 PPP. That is, the International Poverty Line is supposed to reflect the purchasing power in local currency that $1.25 had in the United States in 2005.
According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization statistics, between 1990 and 2007, hunger fell from 16% to 13%, although the number of hungry people actually increased as an absolute number from 843 million to 848 million. But can it be possible that the proportion of poor people has nearly halved while the proportion of undernourished individuals has barely changed at all?
Upon further reflection, the method for calculating and updating the International Poverty Line (IPL) is flawed. The IPL is based (in most cases) on household consumption-expenditure surveys, which track the value of goods consumed by a household, recording the actual prices when goods have been purchased and imputing prices when they have not (such as when food is grown at home, or when education is publicly provided, or health services are provided by an NGO). Once the total value of the goods consumed by the household is recorded, that figure must be converted to US dollars and the base year of 2005. This conversion should take account of purchasing power—ideally the poverty line in any given local currency and year should reflect the same command over resources as the poverty line in some different currency and year.
Each of the steps necessary for calculating the IPL is subject to critical scrutiny. First, the method of converting between currencies and then within currencies to a base year relies on consumer price indices and purchasing power conversions that are sensitive to the prices of the full range of goods consumed in an economy, rather than the specific bundle of goods that is predominantly consumed by poor people. Therefore, if the price of big screen televisions goes down but the price of rice goes up, both will affect the calculation of the local poverty line, even though one piece of information is irrelevant for assessing the purchasing power of the poor.
More fundamentally, the IPL is not rooted in any conception of human needs or capabilities which an individual is supposed to be able to achieve at a given level of consumption. It is simply intended to be an average of the national poverty lines of a representative set of poor countries. But merely averaging national lines is insufficient justification for why some individuals should be characterized as extremely poor and others should not be.
The IPL arguably excludes important dimensions of deprivation that are relevant for assessing deprivation. For example, education, health care, sanitation, and adequate shelter are not well captured by exercises imputing value for their consumption. In many cases, some dimensions of deprivation, such as freedom from violence and social capital, cannot plausibly be imputed values.
Importantly, by taking the household as the unit of analysis, the IPL obscures the intra-household distribution of deprivation. There have frequently been claims that women represent a disproportionate percentage of the poor, but absent morally plausible, gender sensitive conceptions of poverty and corresponding data collection that allow for the assessment of deprivation at an individual level, which takes account of the multiple dimensions of poverty, it simply is not possible to substantiate claims about the global feminization of poverty.
Existing indices of gender equity attempt to reveal gender disparities, but use achievements across the whole population of a country, rather than focusing on those deprivations most relevant, and revealing, for the worst off. All existing indices of gender equity fail to reflect when multiple deprivations are faced by a single individual.
Given the shortcomings of existing measures of poverty and gender equity, an interdisciplinary team of academics and development practitioners has joined together at the Australian National University to solicit the views of poor men and women regarding how poverty is best conceived and measured, with a particular focus on the gendered dimensions of deprivation. Rather than starting with a particular conception of poverty developed by a few analysts, we seek to engage poor men and women to discuss the key issues of poverty measurement.
In the first two phases of fieldwork, we will work with individuals in 18 poor communities of various ages and social locations to examine poverty, how individuals conceive of it, how they understand it to be gendered, and what recommendations they have for measurement. We seek to develop a new measure of deprivation that is capable of revealing the multiple dimensions of deprivation at the individual level, is gender-sensitive, and can be used for interpersonal comparison across context and over time, and then test this measure in the third phase of fieldwork.
We have recently completed the first phase of fieldwork in Fiji, Indonesia, Malawi, Mozambique, and the Philippines (and it is about to get underway in Angola). Key researchers from 5 of the 6 fieldwork countries will be in Canberra to share research findings, engage in group analysis, and begin to plan the second phase of the research project.
We envision this project as one part of a larger process of public reason to help develop new systems of poverty measurement that are, among other things, truly gender-sensitive. We invite you to be a part of this process. On 21 March, lead researchers from all five completed fieldwork countries and project team members will join for a public conference on measuring poverty and gender disparity. More information on the program is available here. We invite you to attend, in collaboration with the Gender Institute and the Development Policy Centre, to discuss key issues in the measurement of poverty and gender disparity, and to follow our future work at www.genderpovertymeasure.org.
http://devpolicy.org/gender-measures-poverty/

POVERTY: To Address Climate Change We Need to Measure Poverty Better

Otaviano Canuto.Vice President, Poverty Reduction, World Bank
March 9, 2011

Increasing food and oil prices are making life miserable for millions of people. According to our World Bank estimates, the food price hike since last July has already pushed another 44 million people around the globe into extreme poverty -- those living on less than US $1.25 a day. But beyond these latest shocks, the truth is that poverty reduction overall had continued in most countries, even after the financial, food and fuel crises of 2008-2009.

In 1981, for instance, the percentage of the world population living below $1.25 a day was 52 percent. By 2005, that rate had more than halved to 25 percent. However, a growing concern is that climate change could slow or possibly even reverse progress in poverty reduction. Why? Because most developing countries are highly dependent on agriculture and natural resources. And also because poor countries lack sufficient financial and technical capacities to manage climate change.
For example, climate change may have a negative effect on agricultural productivity, particularly in tropical regions, and also affect poor people's livelihood through its effects on health, access to water and natural resources, homes, and infrastructure.
So as long as we are unable to measure the poverty impact of climate change, we run the risk of either overestimating or underestimating the resources that will be needed to face it. So that's why at the World Bank we are exploring new approaches to measure how current climate variability affects poverty, as my colleagues do in this week's Economic Premise. According to The Poverty Impacts of Climate Change, different estimates project the poverty increase between 9 and 10 million people by 2055, as the result of climate change.
These numbers might not seem like much, considering the catastrophic scenarios that have been portrayed by some. But climate change will indeed slow the pace of global poverty reduction. And much of the poverty expected to occur will be concentrated in Africa and South Asia. In addition, the "modest" numbers of the poverty increases mentioned above correspond to baseline scenarios -- they could be much higher if more extreme climate change damage occurs. So in light of all of this, more efforts have to go into measuring the poverty impacts of climate change better. Otherwise, we will certainly pay the consequences.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/otaviano-canuto/to-address-climate-change-poverty_b_833529.html

POVERTY: Statistics and estimates and definitions

February 28, 2011


The World Bank is the most commonly used source of statistics on poverty. They define poverty as having purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita income from 2005 statistics of less than $1.25 per day. There has been criticism of the 2005 PPP statistics based on the collection of data for China and India from cities and not rural areas. This has been claimed to have underestimated the PPP per capita income by about 27% in China. The University of Pennsylvania is releasing the Penn World Tables 7.0 which correct for that city/rural problem. The World Bank will not have updated PPP data for another 3-4 years. The current World Bank data is adjusted based of the 2005 basis.
If the Penn World Tables 7.0 is correct then the number of poor people in China and India is overestimated by a large amount. The World Bank does not updates its poverty statistics very often and using older estimates the fast economic growth in China and India is likely causing more citizens to not be classified in living in poverty and would effect the global estimates of poverty [This exact case is made by a Brookings Institute analysis which was covered here].
There have been other criticisms of the World Bank data based on the usage of the single PPP metric. The other criticisms if correct might adjust the estimates to indicate that there are more people in poverty.
The Emperor’s New Suit: Global Poverty Estimates Reappraised by Sanjay Reddy (38 pages) is a critique of the World Banks's method of estimating and tracking world poverty
There is an alternative to the World Bank’s money metric (PPP 2005 $1.25 per day) approach to global consumption poverty estimation. This alternative is simple. It is that the construction of national poverty lines and the design of surveys should be appropriately coordinated through appropriate international standards (on the lines of those applied by the United Nations to the creation of the System of National Accounts) so as to reflect a common meaning of the poverty lines constructed in terms of the resource requirements of essential human achievements. One way of interpreting these achievements is in terms of consumption-dependent basic capabilities. With coordination of poverty line construction (and survey design) across countries, the need for the use of PPPs in poverty assessment would altogether disappear.

Least Developed Country,
Least Developed Country (LDC) is the name given to a country which, according to the United Nations, exhibits the lowest indicators of socioeconomic development, with the lowest Human Development Index ratings of all countries in the world. A country is classified as a Least Developed Country if it meets three criteria:
* low-income (three-year average GNI per capita of less than US $905, which must exceed $1,086 to leave the list)
* human resource weakness (based on indicators of nutrition, health, education and adult literacy) and
* economic vulnerability (based on instability of agricultural production, instability of exports of goods and services, economic importance of non-traditional activities, merchandise export concentration, handicap of economic smallness, and the percentage of population displaced by natural disasters)

The Least Developed Countries Report, 2010 (248 pages, 4 megabytes)
This report has the shift in PPP estimates which reduced China and India's PPP (from 1990 to 2005) based on only using only city statistics. Only using city statistics has been indicated to underestimate PPP per capita income in China and India and other countries.

Low income and Middle Income country Definitions


Wikipedia on low income countries and developing country definitions.
The World Bank classifies countries into four income groups. These are set each year on July 1. Economies were divided according to 2008 GNI per capita using the following ranges of income:
* Low income countries had GNI per capita of US$975 or less.
* Lower middle income countries had GNI per capita between US$976 and US$3,855.
* Upper middle income countries had GNI per capita between US$3,856 and US$11,905.
* High income countries had GNI above US$11,906.

The World Bank classifies all low- and middle-income countries as developing but notes, "The use of the term is convenient; it is not intended to imply that all economies in the group are experiencing similar development or that other economies have reached a preferred or final stage of development. Classification by income does not necessarily reflect development status.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/02/poverty-statistics-and-estimates-and.html

POVERTY: Suffer the Little Children: Poverty in the First World

CHARLES M. BLOW :  December 24, 2010
As we celebrate this Christmas with the sound of tiny feet rushing toward a tree to rip open presents, let’s take a moment to consider the children less fortunate — the growing number who live in poverty in this country.
  Damon Winter/The New York Times
Charles M. Blow

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 42 percent of American children live in low-income homes and about a fifth live in poverty. It gets worse. The number of children living in poverty has risen 33 percent since 2000. For perspective, the child population of the country over all increased by only about 3 percent over that time. And, according to a 2007 Unicef report on child poverty, the U.S. ranked last among 24 wealthy countries. This is a national disgrace.
Yet the reaction to this issue in some quarters is still tangled in class and race: no more welfare to black and brown people who’ve made poor choices and haven’t got the gumption to work their way out of them. The truth is, neither the problem nor the solutions are that simple.
Yes, the percentage of blacks, Hispanics and American Indians living in low-income homes is about twice that of whites and Asians. This raises unpleasant cultural questions that must be addressed. But that’s not the whole story. Despite the imbalance, white children are still the largest group of low-income children.
Furthermore, the British may have created a road map for us that dramatically reduces child poverty while not relying solely on handouts. A report released this month by Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University and the London School of Economics paints a fascinating portrait of how smart policies and targeted investments in that country have produced stellar results.
In 1994, about 30 percent of British children were below the country’s poverty threshold. Fifteen years later, that number has fallen to 12 percent. Over that same time, the number of American children below our poverty line slipped a bit then rose again as the economy turned sour. It is now approaching its 1994 level.
How did the British do it? It was a three-pronged attack.
First, they established a welfare-to-work program and a national minimum wage (which, at about $9, leaves ours wanting) and instituted tax reductions and credits for low-income workers. They made work more attractive, and people responded. The report said, “Lone-parent employment increased by 12 percentage points — from 45 percent to 57 percent — between 1997 and 2008.”
Second, they raised child welfare benefits, especially for families with small children, whether or not the parents worked.
Third, they invested directly in the lives of young children with things like doubling paid maternity leave, providing universal preschool, assisting with child care and allowing parents of young children to request flexible work schedules.
The British example shows that child poverty is not an intractable problem. If we can rise above the impulse to punish parents and focus on protecting children, we might replicate Britain’s success.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/opinion/25blow.html?hp

POVERTY: Costa Rican unemployment down, poverty up

 November 30, 2010: Adam Williams

Unemployment levels at 7.3 percent, while poverty levels rose to 21.3 percent.
The National Statistics and Census Institute (INEC) announced Tuesday that 7.3 percent of the Costa Rican populace is unemployed while 21.3 percent are considered to be living in poverty. INEC presented the information as part of the “2010 National Survey of Homes," which surveyed 13,440 national homes in the six Costa Rican provinces during the months of July and August.
According to the survey, 149,532 of the 2,051,696 employable residents of Costa Rica are unemployed. In 2009, when the unemployment rate reached 8.4 percent, 172,205 citizens were unemployed.
“If you consider that this year we were coming out of the deep economic crisis of 2009, Costa Rica did relatively well in improving the number of people in the workforce,” said Pilar Ramos, the coordinator of the INEC survey. “The economy didn’t grow very much but employment numbers increased. It seems that Costa Ricans did well to find employment during a slow economic year.”
Though employment figures were positive, the number of households living in poverty rose almost 3 percent from its mark of 18.5 in 2009. Of the over 4.5 million residents of Costa Rica, more than one-fifth are considered to be living in poverty, with 6.1 percent living in conditions of extreme poverty. INEC found that the average national monthly salary per home is 804,366 colones ($1,600). The national average monthly salary per person was estimated at 268,592 colones ($540).
According to a study done by United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 32.1 percent of the Latin American population lives in poverty, which represents around 180 million people.
http://www.ticotimes.net/News/News-Briefs/Costa-Rican-unemployment-down-poverty-up_Tuesday-November-30-2010

POVERTY: Latin America saw 41 million emerge from poverty since 2002

Nov 30, 2010 
Santiago - Latin American countries managed to get 41 million people out of poverty since 2002 and improved the distribution of income, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said Tuesday.
Progress was particularly significant in Argentina, Venezuela and Peru, which reduced poverty by 20-30 per cent, ECLAC said.
In Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Panama the reduction was around 10 per cent, where income distribution was also greatly improved.
'There is a generalized trend towards the reduction of poverty, with the exception of Costa Rica,' ECLAC's executive secretary Alicia Barcena said.
The progress, which still leaves Latin America with some 180 million poor, was accomplished by countercyclical fiscal and social policies.
'This is the first time in history in which Latin America managed to reduce poverty immediately after an economic crisis like that of 2008-9,' Barcena noted.
Given the good economic prospects for 2011, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay had reduced poverty rates to around 11 per cent of the population, the lowest in Latin America.
Countries like Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, however, continued to have at least half their population under the poverty line.
'There are indeed very different realities in Latin America, but in all cases we see progress,' Barcena said.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/business/news/article_1602566.php/Latin-America-saw-41-million-emerge-from-poverty-since-2002

POVERTY: PHILIPPINES: Family planning "urgently needed"

  Photo: Ana Santos/IRIN:  A 16-year-old sits beside her newborn baby. This is her second child.

2 December 2010 (IRIN) - Population and sustainable development experts warn that the Philippine population could reach levels that will prevent the country from ever breaking free from a cycle of poverty.
"We need to lower birth rates to 2.2 percent, which is just the sustainable replacement rate," Malcolm Potts from the Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability, told IRIN, warning that at current fertility rates of 3.03 percent, the Philippine population of 94 million could reach 150 million in just 10 years.
Citing Department of Health studies indicating that women in the poorest quintile have 5.9 children while those in the richest quintile have 1.9 children, Potts said, "It's very simple; poor people cannot separate sex from child-bearing. We must give the poor access to family planning and contraception to give them choices."
The Guttmacher Institute, a US-based reproductive health think-tank, released a study in 2009 showing that 35 percent of poor Filipino women aged 15-49 accounted for 53 percent of the unmet need for contraception.
Highest unemployment rate
The Philippines has the highest unemployment rate in the Southeast Asian region at 8 percent compared with Indonesia at 7.9 percent, Vietnam at 4.6 percent, Malaysia at 3.7 percent and Thailand at 1.5 percent.
According to the World Bank, poverty incidence rose from 30 percent in 2003 to 32.9 percent in 2006.
"Having fewer children will allow the poor to invest more in education and health for their children to improve their lives when they grow up," Ernesto Pernia, a professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics said, citing the correlation between family size and poverty incidence.
Urgent need for legislation
There is no national legislation on the standardization of budgets for family planning and reproductive healthcare services for the poor.
The Reproductive Health Bill aims to address this by providing a full range of contraceptive options, including the pill and condoms, as well as natural birth-control methods.
However, the bill is staunchly opposed by the influential Catholic Church that only approves of natural family planning methods requiring periodic abstinence.
The Bill has been wildly debated for the past 15 years.
"Natural family planning, also known as the rhythm method, has never played a role in fertility decline in any country, whether Catholic or not," Potts said.
Martha Campbell, president of Ventures Strategies for Health and Development, which studies reproductive healthcare strategies for developing countries said, "Other Catholic countries like Mexico and Brazil have already decided that the Vatican doesn't need to step into their reproductive lives. The Philippines is the only remaining country where the Catholic Church has a stranglehold on women's health."
"Population growth is a public welfare issue that affects the poorest of the poor. Other poverty containment efforts will never be sufficient until we can curb population growth," said Congresswoman Kaka Bag-ao of the Akbayan Citizen's Action Party, which is pushing for the passage of the Bill.
On 8 December, the UN Population Fund and the International Council on Management of Population Programmes (ICOMP) will hold a regional consultation on family planning in Bangkok.
The goal of the three-day meeting is to gain support from governments and civil societies to prioritize family planning programmes and increase investments in family planning to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and particularly, universal access to reproductive health.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91261

POVERTY: The number of very poor countries has doubled in the last 30 to 40 years,

Agence France-Presse:  November 25th, 2010
GENEVA — The number of very poor countries has doubled in the last 30 to 40 years, while the number of people living in extreme poverty has also grown two-fold, a UN think-tank warned Thursday.
In its annual report on the 49 least developed countries (LDCs) in the world, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that the model of development that has prevailed to date for these countries has failed and should be re-assessed.
"The traditional models that have been applied to LDCs that tend to move the LDCs in the direction of trade-related growth seem not to have done very well," said Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of UNCTAD.
"What happened is that in the past 30-40 years, the number of LDCs have doubled so it has actually deteriorated, the number of people living under the poverty line has doubled from the 1980s."
The report indicated that the situation has sharply deteriorated in the past few years.
The number of individuals living in extreme poverty "increased by three million per year during the boom years of 2002 and 2007," reaching 421 million people in 2007.
While these countries proved somewhat resilient during the crisis, they are nevertheless very fragile, notably due to their dependence on imports.
"The import dependence has become quite devastating, the expenditure for LDCs on food imports rose from 9 billion dollars in 2002 to 23 billion in 2008," noted Supachai.
In addition, the economies in these countries are little diversified, with very weak improvements in domestic savings, a strong reliance on external savings and a faster depletion of natural resources, said UNCTAD.
"All these shortcomings are now hindering the nations' post-recession development prospects," it warned, calling on the countries to adopt a new structure of development.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3604033512937490051

POVERTY: World Banks Lends Uganda $100 Million in Budget Support to Reduce Poverty

By Fred Ojambo - Nov 24, 2010
The World Bank will lend $100 million to Uganda to finance projects aimed at reducing poverty in the East African nation, Finance Minister Syda Bbumba said.
The Washington-based lender will provide the loan through its International Development Agency to improve “service delivery” and “infrastructure development,” Bbumba told reporters today in the capital, Kampala.
The 40-year concessional loan, with a grace period of 10 years, will carry an interest rate of less than 1 percent, the minister said. The World Bank is expected to release the entire loan as early as next week and it will be spent in the 12 months through June, she said.
The loan is the eighth credit line the World Bank has given Uganda to support its budget, with earlier loans worth a total of $760 million, Bbumba said. About 23.3 percent of Uganda’s population live below the poverty line, compared with 31.1 percent in 2005-06, the minister said, without giving details.
The country’s population is rising by 3.2 percent a year, one of the fastest growth rates in the world, with more than half the population under the age of 15, Bbumba said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-24/world-banks-lends-uganda-100-million-in-budget-support-to-reduce-poverty.html

POVERTY: Want to slash poverty? Look to Latin America.

By David R. Francis / November 22, 2010
While poverty has grown in the United States, it's been shrinking in Central and South America.
Brazilian children use new computers in their classroom. A development program in Brazil offered small amounts of cash to poor families if they sent their children to school, contributing to a swift rise in literacy and decline in poverty.

  Agilix Labs, Inc. / AP / File

One in 10 South Americans – about 38 million people – escaped poverty during the past decade. That's remarkable progress by any measure.
Contrast that with the United States, where poverty has been growing due to a decade-long stagnation of income for the middle class and the Great Recession. In 2009, the US had more poor people than in any of the 51 years since poverty levels have been estimated.
Of course, America's poor are far better off than South America's poor. And the US still has a much lower poverty rate (14.2 percent versus around 70 percent). South America remains infamous for huge income gaps between a tiny elite and masses of people making, often, just $1 or $2 a day.
Still, 10 years of growing prosperity has shrunk that gap. The credit goes to democratic leftist governments that have vastly boosted social spending to help the poor, maintains Mark Weisbrot, a left-of-center economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
Half of that improvement comes from Brazil. Under outgoing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the nation pushed up the minimum wage a real 65 percent in eight years, helping to raise the wages of tens of millions of workers, including many receiving more than minimum wage. A program offered small cash grants to poor families if they sent their children to school.
The results? Real income per person is up some 24 percent since 2000. Illiteracy is down. Poverty has been halved since 2002; extreme poverty is down by 70 percent, says Mr. Weisbrot, pulling more than 19 million people into the middle class.
And the economy hasn't suffered. Unemployment under Mr. da Silva's presidency dropped from more than 11 percent to 6.7 percent. Income inequality has fallen considerably.
Other nations with "progressive" governments have made much social progress, notes Weisbrot. He lists Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Venezuela. Under President Hugo Chávez, attacked by the right in the US, oil-rich Venezuela has tripled social spending per person since 2003. Attendance at universities has doubled. Most of the poor now get health care under a government program.
The continent weathered the financial crisis relatively well. Social spending rose. So there was no big rise in poverty, says Norbert Schady, an economic adviser to the Inter-American Development Bank, speaking from Quito, Ecuador.
Moreover, prospects for continued economic progress are strong. The Institute of International Finance (IIF), set up by the world's biggest banks, forecasts 6 percent growth in gross domestic product in Latin America this year, which includes Mex­ico and Central America as well as South Am­er­ica. That growth should shrink poverty further.
By contrast, the IIF forecasts a 2.5 percent growth rate this year for the US. At that slow pace the US could see a further rise in poverty.
South America's new economic vigor is also causing a geopolitical shift. The US has long considered Latin America part of its political and economic sphere of influence. Officials running South America's left-of-center governments often charge the US with imperial ambitions.
But as US growth slows, South America's businesses have reached out to other markets. While 15 percent of South America's trade is still with the US, a greater share is tied to Europe. Also, trade within the continent is growing with a free-trade deal. So South American governments no longer feel so much under the thumb of the US.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/2010/1122/Want-to-slash-poverty-Look-to-Latin-America

Why 300 million more people are suddenly poor

By Jina Moore, November 17, 2010

Kigali, Rwanda

In November, 300 million more people around the world were suddenly poor – on paper, at least. The latest numbers on poverty from the United Nations, released Nov. 4, include a new measurement for poverty and reveal some surprises.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) raises the number of poor by 21 percent, to more than 1.7 billion. According to the MPI, sub-Saharan Africa is still home to the greatest proportion of the world's poor, but more than half of the total number of poor lives in South Asia.
These numbers, and the new index that produced them, are part of the UN's annual Human Development Index (HDI), a statistical touchstone. It covers everything from the number of women who die in childbirth to how many people have Internet access and can sway decisions on US policy, influence where nonprofits spend money, and help determine where donors give.
For years, the HDI has set the standard for just how little a person has to live on to be considered poor. The answer? $1.25. But some researchers have long said income alone doesn't define poverty.
"There are some things money can't buy," says Sabina Alkire, cocreator of the index and director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, which launched the index in collaboration with the UN. "It might not buy electricity; it might not buy a public health system, or an education system."
Ms. Alkire's index looks at poverty more experientially. It uses existing survey data and categorizes households as poor if they lack three or more of the 10 poverty indicators, which are spread across health, education, and basic standards of living. "For the first time ever, it measures poverty by looking at the disadvantages poor people experience at the same time," she says.
Examining more than income changes the equation. It doubles the poor in Ethiopia, where 39 percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day. But 90 percent are "multidimensionally poor," or lacking at least three of the 10 indicators.
"The point is you can have rapid progress on the income poverty side without commensurate progress on other side," says Jeni Klugman, director and lead author of the Human Development Report, where the index debuted.
That's true even in the developed world. Hungary is categorized as a "high human development" country, and fewer than 2 percent of its people live on less than $1.25 a day. But under the MPI, that number triples.
Some specialists have raised objections to the new index, including the director of research at the World Bank, which publishes its own income measure for poverty. Among the criticisms is that the measure is still a single standard, even if it looks at many factors.
"If my bosses were to ask for my recommendation on using the MPI as a factor in allocating USAID resources among countries or programs, I would recommend against doing so," says Don Stillers, an economist for the US Agency for International Development, in an e-mail message. "Rather, I would emphasize the ongoing need to pay attention to evidence on each major dimension of poverty in each country we work in."
Duncan Green, head of research at Ox­fam International and author of "From Poverty to Power," says the measurements are a mixed bag. "There's a wealth of single indices … that cram too much into one pot, but governments notice them, and they notice if they're doing better than their neighbors."
Aid workers say the MPI can help them spend their program money more efficiently – and argue to donors to give those dollars more persuasively.
In the aid world, "[W]e've known for a long time that while a country might look like it's doing fine on a national level, there are great disparities when you look below the surface," says Carlisle Levine, a senior technical adviser for CARE. "For us, it's added information that helps us back up our arguments for making the sort of investments we make."
But Mr. Green says the new measure doesn't go far enough. "The good thing is there's a better picture of what poverty is really about," he says. "But it's a crude measure in terms of how poor people talk about their lives."
Indeed, Alkire of HDI admits her index isn't perfect. She acknowledges that good data are hard to come by, and not all types of data that researchers want even exist. "These are messy numbers, and comparisons are fraught with danger," she says. But she also thinks her approach gives existing information more context and helps correct misperceptions.
"India alone has more people than the 37 sub-Saharan African countries," she says. Comparing countries with big-picture data treats each country equally, but that can literally change how each person inside the country is valued.
"I wanted to look at poor people with an equal weight wherever they lived," she says, "instead of letting the size of their country dictate how much we care about them." 
 http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2010/1117/Why-300-million-more-people-are-suddenly-poor

MALNUTRITION: ASIA: Water scarcity adds to food pressures

Photo: David Swanson/IRIN
HANOI, 12 November 2010 (IRIN) -
Millions more people across Asia will become food insecure due to increased water scarcities, reinforcing the need for greater efficiency in both irrigated and rain-fed rice production.
“The food security of hundreds of millions of people will be adversely affected,” Robert Zeigler, director-general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) told IRIN on the sidelines of the 3rd International Rice Congress in Hanoi.
The five-day conference - which concluded on 12 November - brought together more than 1,200 farmers, scientists and industry experts.
Rice is the staple food for more than half the world's population, including 640 million undernourished people living in Asia, where approximately 90 percent of all rice is grown.
Asia’s 200 million rice farms - most of which are smaller than one hectare - typically use about 3,000 litres of water in their paddy fields to produce 1kg of rice. Less than half of that water is consumed by the plant.
Areas of particular concern include the Indo-Gangetic Plain in India, China, northwestern Bangladesh, parts of Pakistan, as well as drought-affected northeastern Thailand, currently the world’s largest exporter of rice, Zeigler said.

Global demand
Global average rice yields need to rise by at least 1.5 percent annually to keep pace with expected demand. Over the past 20 years (1989-2009), average rice yields have increased by only 1 percent, IRRI reported.

In 2009, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated the annual global rice harvest at 678 million MT. But with the world’s population expected to top eight billion by 2030, keeping pace with demand will prove a challenge. Global rice demand currently increases by about eight million MT annually. In 10 years the world will need to produce 80 million MT more than it does today.
Compounding this are competition for domestic and industrial water usage, the impact of climate change, environmental pressures, less available land to grow rice, and the need to intensify rice research.
“It’s no longer business as usual,” Thierry Facon, senior water management officer for the FAO said, advocating for a more integrated approach. “We simply cannot produce enough with the water and land that is available,” he said.
“Water will be the single most important constraint to achieving levels of food production that are needed,” Norman Uphoff, head of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development, added.
According to the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), between 24 and 30 percent of the world’s accessible freshwater resources (rivers, lakes and aquifers) are used to irrigate rice, with as many as two billion people already affected by water scarcity worldwide.
The pressure on agriculture will thus increase, say experts, and climate change-induced higher temperatures will add to water requirements for crops, so shortages will become more serious.

Global Fresh Water Use by Sector:
Irrigated rice: 24 to 30 percent
Other agiculture: 40 percent
Domestic: 10 percent
Industrial: 20 percent
Source: Data from IWMI (2007) and WRI (2005)

By 2025, 15 to 20 million of the world’s 79 million hectares of irrigated rice lowlands - which provide three-quarters of the world’s rice supply – will likely experience some degree of water scarcity, the IWMI reported.
Meanwhile, drought in rain-fed lowlands reduces crop productivity, depending on when this occurs relative to the growth of the rice plant. Drought also affects the availability of soil nutrients for plant uptake and can increase weed pressure, experts say.
“Addressing the issue of water scarcity will not be done with one solution. We need an integrated approach,” Frederic Arboucalot, global head of rice seed and traits for Bayer CropScience, one of the world’s leading crop science companies, emphasized.
According to the recent international task force report, Never an Empty Bowl, Sustaining Food Security in Asia - nearly two-thirds of the world’s 1.4 billion poor live in Asia, and spend on average about half their income on food.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91069

POVERTY: Nigeria and West Africa

By John Amoda

JOHN Ighodaro in the Vanguard of Wednesday October 6, 2010 titled his story thusly: “Population of seven W-African states equals the poor in Nigeria”. He was quoting Mr. Adama who made this known at a workshop in Calabar.
“According to (Mr. Adama) about 78 million Nigerians (54% of the population) live below poverty line of less than a dollar a day. This number of people make up more than the combined population of Ghana, Togo, Sierra Leone, Benin Republic, Liberia, Gambia, and Cote D’Ivoire which is 67.3 million.”
Whether this is a conservative estimate or not, such statistics beg for explanation. Why are there so many people living in poverty in Nigeria?
Are many so poor because they are uneducated? Again the following question introducing tips for unemployed graduates: “Are you an unemployed graduate?” in the Sunday 3, October 2010 NEXT ON SUNDAY show that lack of education is not the explanation.
Mr. Adama’s poor are not necessarily the unemployed. Some may be employed but earn per day less than a dollar, or take home less than a dollar.
The above incidence of poverty in Nigeria is not unique to the country. Poverty in the other 52 countries in Africa is of configuration similar to Nigeria’s. This is the case because poverty in Africa is first and foremost a consequence of the structuring of economies. The economic integration in Africa of conquered territories as provinces of European empires enable us to see clearly why this is the case. Claude Ake explains how cocoa was introduced into the Gold Coast (now Ghana).
“When the Gold Coast (now Ghana) was colonised, it did not farm cocoa. The colonial government decided that the country would be suitable ground for farming cocoa and duly introduced the crop. In 1865 the country started exporting cocoa, and by 1901 it was the leading producer of the commodity in the world. It quickly became a mono-cultural cocoa economy; by 1939 cocoa accounted for 80 percent of the value of its exports” (Ake, Claude, Democracy and Development in Africa P.2).
The introduction of cocoa is a shorthand for the restructuring of the economies of the pre-colonised societies so as to make those employed in cocoa production an economic caste. Those not engaged in cocoa production became redundant in what had become a cocoa economy. Similarly the introduction of cotton production in Uganda followed the same pattern as that of cocoa. We quote from Mahmood Mamdani: “The first cotton flower was taken to Uganda by the BCGA through a Church Missionary Society missionary.
K. Borup in 1903 formed the Uganda Company and imported 2.5 tons of five different kinds of seeds which were distributed to 27 in eight districts of Buganda. The results were so promising that the government took the lead and, through the BCGA, began to import and distribute American Black Rattler seeds to growers in Buganda, Busoga, and Ankole in 1905.
The production of cotton in these early years was the result of compulsion, exercised through the mailo landlord-cum-chief rather than directly by the colonial state. As state officials explained. The average peasant of the Protectorate (is) so indolent that it (is) unlikely that he would have embarked on it (cotton production) on any considerable scale if he had not been more or less driven to making experiments by the chief or the headman on whose land he happened to be a tenant”.
In time, however, state officials became more circumspect. In 1925, when charges of “forced cultivation of cotton” were laid before the Ormsby-Gore Commission, the government maintained that the peasant chose to grow cotton “of his own free will”, and released a copy of an instructional telegram from the chief secretary to the provincial commissioner, Western Province.
“I am directed by the Governor to state that the line to be adopted is not to be one of definite pressure towards cotton production. Natives to be informed that three courses are open, cotton, labour for government, labour for planters, but no attempt to be made to induce them to choose any one in preference to the other.
Only one thing to be made clear that they cannot be permitted to do nothing, and can be of no use to themselves or the country. Inform D.C Mbara accordingly.” (Mahmood Mamdani- Politics and Class Formation in Uganda Pp. 45-46).
The details not mentioned in the case of the introduction of cocoa in the Gold Coast are highlighted in the case of the introduction of Cotton in Uganda because they are generic in the strategy informing the introduction cocoa, cotton, mineral mining etc in the colonies.
The introduction is the summary of the process of the economic conversion of the pre-colonial economies into the colonial. In this conversion process populations that are essential to the production of the colonial commodities are differentiated from the segments that are deemed redundant to the colonial production.
The economically redundant are expendable and as such constitute the colonial underclass, the indigent and impoverished whose condition is the result of the economic use of state power. The concept of poverty employed by the World Bank, namely those living below the poverty line does not apply to the category of the economically expendable, those without place in the economy.
Every restructure of economies create its categories of the essential, the marginal and of the expendable. Populations needed by the economy are able to use their economic importance as bargaining chips and can mobilise for living wages and opportunities.
Those that have no place in the economy are the indigent, unemployable. It is the third category of the marginally important that have a history of under-employment and unemployment- it is this category that are presently captured by the statistical measure of those living below the poverty line.
Economic self-enlightment therefore compel the state and the producers to provide living wages for the economically essential populations.
It is by this line of explication that we get to appreciate the differences of economic conditions of segments of the Nigerian population. The question to be answered is how to describe the poor in Nigeria. Are they the economically redundant, and thus expendable? Are they mainly the marginal? Are they both the expendable and the marginal? What is the geography of the poor?
Are the expendable mainly rural and who must fend for themselves? What is the character of the urban poor? From this perspective the security implications of the structuring of economies can be appreciated especially in the context where electioneering has fuelled the ethnification and tribalization of population.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/10/poverty-and-the-structuring-economies/

POVERTY: India: Clean Energy Strategy?

Around 1.7 billion people live in poverty  around the world.
That’s a quarter of the world’s population; more than the US and China combined and over three times the population of the EU.
Of that 1.7 billion, a full 700 million live in India; over 60% of the country’s population. If want to alleviate poverty, India seems like a good place to start.
This is why a recent report by the World Resources Institute and the Institute for Financial Management and Research is of great importance. It’s looked at India’s poverty stricken population and identifies four key clean energy strategies which should go a long way to alleviating poverty and suffering in the country.
However, if left in the hands of “traditional” businesses this bottom of the pyramid (BoP) selling will do little more than reinforce the destitution within which these people live. So these strategies must be backed up with sustainable business practices which will seek to bring advantage to these communities and genuinely increase well being, not just strip mine wealth to the top of the pyramid.
http://cleantechnica.com/2010/10/04/top-four-ways-clean-energy-alleviates-poverty/

POVERTY: Philippines: poverty increasing among children

17 September 2010 (IRIN) - A new study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) [ ] and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), estimates that 12.8 million children under the age of 15 are living in poverty, an increase of one million over a three-year period. "Forty-four percent of all Filipino children are living in poverty and also suffer from other dimensions of poverty like deprivations of food, shelter, health and education," Vanessa Tobin, UNICEF country representative, told IRIN. Released on 16 September, but based on data compiled from 2003 to 2006, the key findings of the study demonstrate clear trends across the country, with 9.2 million of the 12.8 million children living in rural areas. According to the study, 5.4 million children were deprived of at least one of the three dimensions of well-being - shelter, sanitation, and water - in 2006. In June 2009, the Child Development Index, released by the National Statistics Coordination Board, indicated the human development of children deteriorated in the period 2003-2006, when the poverty rate rose.

POVERTY: ETHIOPIA-GHANA: MDG success stories

16 September 2010 (IRIN) - Many sub-Saharan African countries are off-track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, but there have been pockets of success: Ghana is set to become the first country in Africa to halve poverty and hunger before 2015, while primary school enrolment in Ethiopia has increased by more than 500 percent since 1994, according to the Overseas Development Institute. Common to both examples has been the sustained commitment of each government to reform the respective sector, say researchers Jakob Engel and Henri Leturque. [http://www.odi.org.uk/news/documents/196-media-brief-development-progress-stories-showcasing-outstanding-examples-national-progress.pdf]"The story of the past 20 years in Ghana's agriculture sector has been one of incremental yet sustained change, rather than dramatic development," states the Ghana report. Government-led economic reforms in Ghana, including devaluing the currency, liberalizing markets, and restructuring the then-inefficient cocoa marketing board, helped to boost food production by 80 percent per capita over the past 30 years, says the ODI, and enabled Ghana to become almost self-sufficient in staple crops such as yam and cassava. After 1983, agriculture grew at 5.1 percent annually, on average, and wider food availability resulted in a drop from 34 to 8 percent in moderate malnutrition between 1991 and 2003. The percentage of underweight children under five fell from 30 to 17 percent from 1988 to 2008, says the ODI. But there is more to it: "There is a strong link between widening food availability and dropping malnutrition," Leturque told IRIN, "but it is by no means the only answer - improved health and sanitation, and improved childcare practices, also played a role." Despite progress in these areas, Ghana is off-track to achieve MDGs 4 and 5, to improve child and maternal health, according to a report by the National Development Planning Commission, released on 14 September. Education in Ethiopia In Ethiopia, the government set out to improve the education sector when it came to power after the civil war, "recognizing rural poverty was not only a key driver in conflict and inequality, but was also holding the country back and perpetuating the cycle of poverty... and that ensuring children had access to school was key to these broader development goals," Engel told IRIN. The government developed education reform plans and gradually upped its education spend from 8 percent of the total budget in 1985 to 23 percent in 2009, with donor education aid also rising. The increased funds went towards abolishing school fees, constructing and improving schools, and hiring and training teachers, among other activities, says the ODI. Key to meeting MDG 2 (achieving universal primary education) was a move in 1991 to devolve power to regions and districts to run their own schools; and shifting the language of instruction to local languages, says the ODI. In 1994, just three million pupils in Ethiopia attended primary school; by 2008 15.5 million did so, while secondary school attendance increased fivefold. Local authorities involved parent-teacher associations in rehabilitating and reviving schools, said Engel. "Lots of the investments made created access to households to send their children to school for the first time - there was a genuine appreciation of that, and people started to realize its relevance in their lives." But more needs to be done to ensure progress continues - and is equitably spread in both countries. In Ethiopia, high drop-out rates remain in secondary school, quality teaching is still lacking, and some regions, such as Afar and Somali, are lagging behind on primary school enrolment. To get as-yet-unreached children into school, "will take more than school construction; it will take a focus on non-formal education, addressing maternal and child health, and early childhood development", said Engel. Agricultural growth in Ghana has also been inequitably distributed: concentrated in the south to the detriment of the north. "A lot still needs to be done to support the north, where there are fewer resources to work with," said Leturque. aj/sda/mw[END]CLICK ON LINK BELOW TO READ THE REPORT ONLINEHttp://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=90498

POVERTY: Poverty has led to the deaths of 200,000 youngsters in Tanzania in a decade

Lachlan Mackinnon
Sep 7 2010
TWO hundred thousand Tanzanian children have died in the last 10 years simply because they were poor, a charity insisted yesterday.
Save The Children accused the east African nation's government of ignoring deprived countryside kids and focusing limited efforts to cut child deaths on easy-to-reach youngsters in the better-off towns and cities.
More than half of the country's population are children and 54 per cent of them are malnourished.
Babies account for 30 per cent of child deaths.
While the overall under-fives mortality rate fell from 157 per 1000 in 1990 to 139 in 2000 and 104 in 2008, Save The Children say deaths among the poorest children have remained stubbornly high.
Ten years ago, world leaders agreed on a set of international targets to cut poverty - including a commitment to slash child deaths by 67 per cent by 2015.
But the east African country of Tanzania - like dozens of others - is off-track, an issue world leaders will discuss at a UN summit in New York later this month.
The Record travelled around Tanzania - home of the Serengeti national park - with Save The Children to inspect attempts to cut child deaths and to listen to kids' and mothers' often-heartbreaking concerns.
At Nyango District Hospital in Lindi, as in the rest of the country, pregnant women and under-fives are treated for free.
But the plight of Zinabu Jafari, 41, suggests the system is fundamentally flawed.
Her newborn twins weigh just 1.9kg and 2.5kg and are expected to die without specialist hospital treatment to increase their size.
Yet, for no apparent reason, Zinabu - whose husband left her when he found out she was having twins - has been told she will be discharged from hospital.
The gran-of-one, whose eldest child is 25 years old, said: "My first five children were born at home because there was no hospital.
"The only problem I had was with my fourth children when I bled for a month about five months into my pregnancy but I was OK after that.
"My seventh child was born seven years ago and I had no idea I was going to have twins this time.
"When the first one came out I was surprised my abdomen was still large and was amazed when another baby came out.
"I don't know what has happened to my husband, just that he is leaving.
"I am not sure about my children's future.
"I thought I was going to have one baby and now I have two.
"I have been told I have to leave the hospital and am concerned about having enough food for my family, producing enough milk for the babies and clothing my children."
Elizabeth Kanlanga, 28, had walked five kilometres to the hospital with one-year-old daughter Zulfa Ajali, who fell down a flight of stairs.
The child was not seriously injured but Elizabeth also raised concerns about the healthcare on offer.
She said: "Sometimes they do not examine you or your baby and give you the wrong medicine.
"And even though they say it's free, women going to the labour ward have to take their own gloves and basins with them."
Edna Hyela feels differently and insists progress is being made.
She has run a prenatal health clinic at the hospital since 1999 after working for 33 years as a midwife.
Edna said: "We ask the pregnant women about how they are feeling, what vaccines they have had and run tests to check for things like malaria, worms, bilharzia, syphyllus and high blood pressure.
"We give them counselling before the HIV test and the women are willing to receive their results."The rates have gone down since I started doing this job and we are able to give the pregnant women drugs to try to prevent the disease being transmitted to the babies."
Due to a chronic shortage of incubators, Save The Children are training medical staff and local volunteers on a technique to keep babies warm called Kangaroo Mother Care.
New mums are encouraged to hold their babies against their chest in the same way a kangaroo keeps its joey tucked in a pouch.
Somoe Salumu, 35, whose twins were born in hospital on August 18, and her mum Mwanamkulu Sulemani, who said she was born between 1948 and 1955, said they were comfortable using the method.
Somoe, who has 13-year-old twins and a five-year-old child, said: "I am happy to give birth to twins but I had no idea I was going to have them and it is a burden as I already have three children to feed.
"Life is difficult for us because we are very poor.
"I try to give my children and husband two meals of millet and cassava a day but there is not always enough food."
Shamba Donlat, a social scientist who helps at the hospital, told how the attitude of fathers made life harder for mums-to-be.
He said: "There is a taboo here about giving birth.
"The dad often has no idea where the mum goes to have their baby.
"Things are changing slowly but even now most children around the age of five are told how they should behave as a man or woman.
"This makes it hard for a woman to admit she is in labour and she has to find a female relative or neighbour to help her.
"Many women choose to give birth at home and this can be dangerous if there are complications such as heavy bleeding."
Many people live too far from hospitals to walk to them and Save The Children have helped support a network of local health clinics, known as dispensaries.
The Kilangala dispensary provides basic medical care for 80,000 people in the poor rural community.
They offer vaccinations for children, maternity services for pregnant women and teach locals how to prepare more nutritious meals to prevent them falling ill.
The main diseases locally are malaria, respiratory infections, pneumonia, meningitis, diarrhoea, skin infections, asthma and heart disease.
Clinical officer Fridoline Mrope, who runs the dispensary, said: "We don't have electricity, which makes it difficult to work at night, or running water to keep everything clean.
"The nearest water source is half a mile from here.
"There is also a lack of transport to bring sick people or women in labour to this unit or to take them to hospital for more specialised treatment.
"And we have no accomodation for staff which reduces the time the unit is open."
The acute need for medical services within walking distance is easy to identify.
Eisha Abadallah stumbled along the dusty road to the dispensary cradling her distressed two-year-old daughter Aisha Selemani in both arms.
Eisha said: "I'd left water boiling to make some tea and when I turned around Aisha had knocked the pot over and scalded her legs."
Tiny Aisha's distress could be heard outside Fridoline's office as he cleaned and dressed her wounds which will leave a permanent scar.
The dispensary also runs the Opendo - which means love - Care Group whose 30 members drawn from the local community are trained to spread health messages.
Secretary Mohamedi Hassan Njengu proudly told of their achievements, which included enouraging 33 out of 42 women to give birth at health centres instead of at home and ensuring all but two of the areaÕs 234 under-fives received essential vaccines.
Fellow group member Ally Hassan shows pregnant women and mothers of young children how to cook nutritious meals such as porridge or soups rich in starch, protein, fat, minerals and vitamins which can be fed to the family three times a day.
Ally said: "There's a high rate of malnutrion because many people sell what they grow instead of eating it themselves."
A children's group is also run from the dispensary.
While much of the emphasis is on having fun, youngsters are also taught about healthy eating, the importance of vaccinations and avoiding early pregnancy.
It is a lifeline for children who have lost one or both parents.
Dalini Rashid has lived with her grandmother ever since her mum and dad died 10 years ago.
The painfully-shy 17-year-old, who insisted she does not know how her parents died, said: "We learn all about different diseases like malaria and cholera and are taught about avoiding teenage pregnancies.
"Having a group means we can fight for children's rights and request things like uniforms and exercise books for school.
"My favourite subjects are english and science and one day I'd like to be a doctor."
Nozlati Hashim, who lives with her mum, echoed the need for young girls - especially orphans living on the streets - to be given information about avoiding sexual diseases and pregnancy.
In a soft yet confident voice, the 11-year-old said: "We're being taught how to prevent ourselves from getting infections like malaria, bilharzia and being aware of teenage pregnancy.
"When I grow I'd like to be a teacher so I can share my knowledge with children."
However, slightly-built Nozlati was unable to speak when asked about her father.
Tears streamed relentlessly from both of her eyes, even though she did not sob, as she whispered a few choked words.
The reason for her distress was shocking.
Her grandfather decided to build a mosque and sought advice from a witch doctor who told him he must kill his own son to be successful.
The grand-dad acted on those orders, robbing Nozlati of her bus driver father.
Azizi Ali Ligunga's keen eyes and mischievious smile belie personally tragedy.
His HIV-infected sister died aged 19 last year while his dad was killed by "recurrent illnesses" some time ago.
The 11-year-old loves attending the group because he "wanted to play with the other children" and access to school uniforms and textbooks.
He said: "My dream is to play for Simba Football Club one day and become as successful as my favourite player Cristiano Ronaldo."
Across the only proper road, Somoe Mohamed, 24, cradled critically-ill son Abdul Haniu outside her home.
The seven-month-old lay limp and lifeless in her arms, struck down by malaria.
Mum-of-two Somoe has already lost three children, who died - possibly of malaria - before they reached the age of one month.
She said: "Abdul was vomiting, had a fever, diarrhoea and was sleepy but now he receiving medicine his temperature is coming down and we are hopeful he will survive.
"I often have headaches too and have had malaria many times."
Half a mile away into the dusty undergrowth, Zuhura Mohamed, 27, appeared to be unaware her unborn baby had died inside her.
The mum-of-one attended hospital because of severe stomach pains, was told her baby was "hiding" and given a return appointment on September 2 when they will almost certainly chemically induce the infant.
She said: "They told me they could not hear the heartbeat and I told them I had not felt any movement for about two months.
"They told me the baby is hiding somewhere in the womb and asked me to return later.
"I am grateful to the health group for paying for my hospital treatment because I donÕt understand what is wrong with my baby."
Neighbour Mwanaharusi Said, 30, who gave birth to third child Taliki Said on June 27, had serious concerns about life for ordinary Tanzanian villagers.
While pregnant with Taliki, she had paid for hospital treatment for anaemia with cash given to her by the local dispensary which is supported by Save The Children.
Mwanharusi said: "My other children are seven and five and have frequently suffered from malaria."Their health is not looking good but I am grateful for all the support and love I have received.
"I have been shown how to make more nutritious food and I am feeling better than I used to and am producing more breast milk.
"But we still have a problem with water.
"The nearest well is two kilometres away and the water is not always clean.
"We also have a problem with schooling.
"The local government school is not big enough which means there are a lot of children who are idle and roam the streets."
Sanitation is also a problem in the village.
Many households do not have access to a toilet, meaning people have to either find a neighbour to share one with or go into the bushes.
And because water is scarce and soap too expensive, many Tanzanians cannot wash themselves, their cooking pots or clothes.
In an attempt to improve the lives of youngsters, children's councils have been set up in 228 electoral wards and there are plans to roll the scheme out further.
The forums, which have elected members, allow children to report concerns such as kids being subjected to excessive beatings by parents or teachers or not being sent to school or for vaccinations.
Shabani Mohamedi, 13, Habiba Humbili, 12, and James Macheo, 12, were fiercely proud of being voted on to Lindi childrenÕs council and insisted they faced many challenges.
Shabani, who wants to be an engineer, said: "There was one child who wasn't being sent to school by his parents who were sending her out into the streets to sell fruit.
"She is eight years old and feels sad she cannot go to school with the other girls.
"The adults do not treat us well sometimes.
"They often strike their children.
"Before we started the children's council, many parents would not send their children for vaccinations but we are helping to change this.
"If I was in charge of Lindi I would motivate parents to keep their children at school."
Habiba, who wants to be a nurse, said: "Sometimes when two children fight instead of dealing with the problem the parents start arguing and set a bad example.
"There is also a problem in school with boys getting priority treatment compared with the girls."It makes me sad because I need to be educated too."
James, who wants to be a doctor, said: "Sometimes parents are not willing to take their child to school and we go to them and try to convince them.
"But instead of listening to us they often tell us to go away.
"Some parents give their children corporal punishment but this has been reduced.
"Girls are sometimes treated worse because the boys can accuse them of doing something wrong and the parents believe boys more than girls.
"The best thing about living in Lindi is we can easily find education.
"But the parents are not always able to afford the school uniforms and that makes me sad."
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2010/09/07/poverty-has-led-to-the-deaths-of-200-000-youngsters-in-tanzania-in-a-decade-says-save-the-children-86908-22544075/