An OECD report has revealed that Israel, Turkey and Mexico have the highest rates of child poverty (in OECD countries). In these countries, over a quarter of children live in poverty. This is measured as the proportion of children living in households with an equivalised disposable income of less than half of the median income of the total population. Northern Europe has the lowest level of child poverty worldwide with the rate in Denmark 9 times lower than in Israel and Turkey.
Facts and statistics about Poverty
Poverty can be defined as the state of a person or a group of people that lacks a specified amount of money or material possessions. The World Bank defines poverty more specifically as follows: “Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life.”
The World Bank definition follows the concept of absolute poverty. This approach is usually used to measure poverty in developing countries, where poverty is often a matter of subsistence. According to this concept, poverty is defined as follows: extreme poverty is living on less than 1.25 U.S. dollars a day (Purchasing Power Parity) and moderate poverty is living on less than 2 U.S. dollars a day. Developed countries normally report poverty rates based on relative poverty. Relative poverty is typically determined based on a certain percentage of a society’s median income. Every person living of an income underneath this poverty line is considered poor.
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The U.S. Census Bureau follows a similar approach when calculating the poverty rate of the United States. In 2010, the poverty line for a single person under 65 years was at a total income of 11, 344 U.S. dollars a year. According to this measure 46 million Americans, or 15.1 percent of the population, lived in poverty in 2010. The child poverty rate in the United States was at 22 percent, up from 16.2 percent in 2000. The poverty rate in the U.S. greatly varies across different ethnic groups. While only 9.9 percent of the white population lived below the poverty line in 2010, the poverty rates for Blacks and Hispanics were 27.4 and 26.6 percent respectively.
In other parts of the world the level of poverty is far more dramatic. In 2009, more than one billion people worldwide suffered from hunger and malnutrition according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization. While the situation is continuously improving in South and East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa still suffers from extremely high poverty levels. In addition to the high prevalence of HIV, malnutrition and extreme poverty are the main reasons for the low life expectancy in Africa compared to other regions of the world.
You will find more statistics at Statista
