Poverty

World Bank Graphic

"We have enough for everybody's need. But not enough for everybody's greed"
~Mahatma Gandhi

No man should be allowed or forced to die, because he cannot afford to live
~Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
~Charles Darwin

"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

"For all too many... life is a continuous struggle against hunger, malnutrition, polluted drinking water, infectious disease, ignorance, oppression and violent conflict"

-Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not being able to go to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom. 

Of the world's 6 billion people, more than 1.2 billion live on less than $1 a day. Two billion more people are only marginally better off. About 60 percent of the people living on less than $1 a day live in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The world's 3 richest people have wealth greater than the combined Gross Domestic Product (the value of all goods and services) of the world's 48 poorest nations. 

The world's richest 225 people have combined assets equal to the combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorest people. 

The World's Top 25 Billionaires 2008

Credit: Forbes 

GDP - per capita

GDP or GNP per Capita Gross national product (GNP) per capita is the dollar value of a country's final output of goods and services in a year divided by its population. It reflects the average income of a country's citizens

Population living below $1 a day (%)

Source: CIA World Factbook, 18 October, 2007, World Bank World Development Indicators 2007