10. 80% of the World’s Population Live on Less than $10 per Day.
With 7 billion people living in the world, this means that 5.6 billion of them live on less than $10 per day. To put that in perspective the average annual household earnings in the United States are just above $51,000, which works out at $139 per day.
9. 1 in 9 People Don’t have Access to Clean, Safe Drinking Water.
Charity Water estimate that around 800 million people in the world don’t have access to safe drinking water, resulting in the spread of many deadly diseases, including malaria, typhoid, cholera, trachoma. Many of these 800 million have to walk for hours every day, just to gain access to water at all, with this back-breaking walk generally carried out by women. Trachoma, a water-borne disease that effects vision, in worst case scenarios turning the sufferer blind. Women are two to three times as likely as men to contract the disease.
8. 90% of all Malaria Deaths Occur in Africa: 80% of those who die are Children.
This statistic is particularly shocking when you consider that there are a number of different drugs on the market to treat and cure malaria, they simply are not making it to the parts of the world where they are most needed.
Malaria can be contracted by being bitten by female mosquitos, or as is more often the case in the developing world, by drinking water contaminated by the insects. Unicef estimated that every year there are between 300 and 500 million cases of malaria in the world.
7. #AmIDreaming: 1 in 7 People live below the Poverty Line in the U.S.
Poverty is not something that affects the poorest, most remote regions of the world, it is something that sadly exists in even the richest of societies. More than half of Americans will experience some form of poverty before they reach the age of 65.
The increasing reliance on food stamps, the controversy around healthcare and of course the age old arguments around taxes may seem a continual part of political life but for many, the adjustments in pricing for each of these essentials have serious consequences for low-income families.
6. #Really: $6 Billion would Provide Basic Education for Everyone Globally.
It goes without saying that the poorest people in the world do not have the chances those in the West do when it comes to education.
17% of the world’s population cannot even read or write, and over two thirds of that 17% are women. To put the figure of $6 billion in context, clothing retailer Zara had profits of $3.23 for 2012 alone. That means in less than two years, the company could generate enough money to offer basic education to everyone in the world.
5. Every Year, 10 Million Children die before their 5 th Birthday.
Childhood mortality rates are often calculated at a child’s first and fifth birthdays. The idea is that if a child is strong enough to survive to their fifth birthday, they will have built up an immune system that will almost certainly equip them to live to adulthood. p>In the developing world however, stunted growth, vitamin deficiencies and a basic lack of food and water are they initial disadvantages any child faces before they encounter disease.
Diarrhoea is one of the main killers of children under five, with Afghanistan having the highest childhood mortality rate, followed by Mali and Somalia.
4. 1 in 4 People in the World Live without Electricity.
Electricity in the West is such an integrated part of our daily lives, we have no longer become conscious of it. Try finding a street in an urban area that is not covered by street lamps at night-you’ll be hard pushed to find one. Electricity provides more than just light however, it provides safety: food can be cooked and refrigerated, medical equipment sterilised and water purified all as a result of electricity.
Many villages in the developing world rely on generators to provide electricity, but these are often outdated and unreliable. Like education, electricity is something that could be provided the world over.
3. The 85 Richest People Have the Same Wealth as the 3.5 Billion Poorest.
3.5 billion people is about half the world’s population, which gives a sense of the inequality of wealth in the world.
Only last week the charity Oxfam reported that the richest 1% of the world’s population control over half of the planet’s wealth- that’s an estimated $110 trillion! Disparity of wealth is not simply a statistic and it’s not getting better: Oxfam has also been reported that 70% of the global population now live in countries where inequality has actually increased in the past 30 years.
2. 1 in 2 Children Around the World Live in Poverty.
Women and children are in all parts of the world those most affected by poverty: in 2011, 19,000 children died every day for curable diseases such as pneumonia, malaria and diarrhoea. On top of that 88% of children born with HIV/AIDS are in sub-Saharan Africa.
1. Hunger is the Number One Cause of Death in the World
According to the World Food Programme, hunger is humanity’s biggest killer. Chillingly, every year hunger kills more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined do. Not only that, but in the US, 47 million Americans are dependent on food stamps- without which they would almost certainly go hungry.
Therichest.com
