What is Extreme Poverty?
- An extremely poor person lives on less than a dollar a day.
- Extremely poor nations are often heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs). HIPCs have huge debt burdens, often to the governments of rich nations, and have a large population of extremely poor people and lack a tax base to fund basic government or health services.
An extremely poor person:
- Walks more than a mile per day for water and cooking fuel.
- Has less than a 50% chance to get primary education, and less than a 20% chance of obtaining a secondary education.
- Lives with the threat of death from diseases easily treated in the rich world, such as diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria.
- Never or rarely gets enough to eat.
- Lacks safe drinking water or a simple latrine.
- Lacks shelter.
An extremely poor nation:
- Spends more on servicing debts to rich nations than on basic services for their citizens.
- Faces rampant malaria or HIV/AIDS combined with diseases like tuberculosis that kill huge numbers of workers, leaving nations with no way to feed themselves.
Disease, lack of education, hunger, huge debt burdens and infrastructure breakdown in poor countries create immediate, desperate need, and to survive people must consume resources that would otherwise be used to build a better future. This is known as a poverty trap.
Learn how to cure extreme poverty by 2025.