The Fourth World Youth Movement

is part of the Fourth World Movement, an organisation dedicated to the fight against poverty.

www.atd-fourthworld.org

Poverty: the Haves and the Have Nots

World Poverty

Absolute poverty is defined according to an absolute minimum standard, often called the ‘poverty line’.

Relative poverty means that you are poor in relation to those around you.

Income poverty (‘less than a dollar a day’, for example) means that you are poor if you have less money than the defined poverty line for you country.

Human poverty takes into account other factors, such as life expectancy, infant malnutrition, illiteracy and lack of food or clean water.

Malnutrition ill health caused by inadequate food.

Illiteracy inability to read or write.

Sanitation systems for taking dirty water and waste from homes to ensure good hygiene

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) the total value of all the goods and services produced in a country in one year, excluding income received from abroad.

Gross National Product (GNP) plus money earned from abroad by companies based in that country.

Poverty alleviation reducing the level of poverty.

Debt servicing paying back money owned on loans.

The Rich

In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people who live in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20%; now it is 82 times. The world’s 225 richest people have a combined wealth of over $1 million million. Only four per cent of this wealth - $40 billion – would be enough for basic education and healthcare, adequate food, and safe water and sanitation for all the world’s people.

∙ the 15 richest people have assets that exceed the total GDP of sub-Saharan Africa.

∙ the assets of the 84 richest people exceed the GDP of Chine, which has 1.2 billion inhabitants.

Aiding The Poor

The UN has set the target for overseas aid at 0.7% of a countries GNP. Only the Netherlands and Sweden currently meet this target and the US aid budget is the lowest of all. Overall, the average aid provided by richer countries is 0.22% of GNP. If it had stayed at its 1992 level of 0.33%, it would today be $24 billion more than it is.

The majority of aid is not spent on direct poverty alleviation. Some is ‘tied’ to trade deals, or debt servicing. In 1997, debt-service payments from sub-Saharan Africa amounted to 80% of aid. Only 24.3% of overseas aid goes to the poorest countries.

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