In a world where a few hundred millionaires own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people, poverty is a choice made by the rich, not by the poor.
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More than 8 million people die each year from abject poverty
Half the world – nearly three billion people – live on less than $2 a day
Almost a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read or sign their names
852 million people do not have enough to eat, 1.3 billion have no safe water, 2 billion have no access to electricity and 3 billion have no sanitation
Hunger and malnutrition are the number one risk to global health, killing more people than AIDS, malaria and TB put together.
Children are the future – aren’t they?
Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, one billion – almost half – live in poverty
10.9 million children die every year before they reach the age of five
A child dies every five seconds because she or he is hungry
Every year, 17 million children are born undernourished because their mothers don’t have enough to eat
More than a billion children will not go to school this year – 65% of them girls.
Who ate all the pies?
51 of the world’s 100 wealthiest bodies are corporations
A few hundred millionaires own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people
The combined economic output of a quarter of the world’s countries is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest men.
Who lives? Who dies?
In Bolivia and Peru, babies are four to five times as likely to die if they are born in the poorest 20% of the population than the richest 20%
80% of all Ethiopians live on less than two dollars a day – and 26% on less than a dollar
Life expectancy in Afghanistan is just 43 years.
It’s a matter of choice
Just one week’s worth of the subsidies given to farmers in rich countries would cover the annual cost of global food aid
$20 billion is spent on cosmetics in the United States each year – more than double the $9 billion it would take to provide basic water and sanitation for everyone
Annual global military spending exceeds $1 trillion. That’s a thousand billion dollars – around 100 times what it would cost to put every child in the world through primary school.
A better world? You choose
It doesn’t have to be like this.
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