Poverty and hunger free essay sample

And both Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean seem to have turned a corner entering the new millennium. After steadily increasing from 51 percent in 1981 to 58 percent in 1999, the extreme poverty rate fell 10 percentage points in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1999 and 2000 and is now at 48 percent an impressive decline of 17 percent in one decade. In Latin America and he Caribbean, after remaining stable at approximately 12 percent for the last decades of the 20th century, extreme poverty was cut in half between 1999 and 2010 and is now at 6 percent. l However, despite its falling poverty rates, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world for which the number of poor individuals had risen steadily and dramatically between 1981 and 2010. There were more than twice as many extremely poor living in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2010 (414 million) than there were three decades ago (205 million). As a result, while the extreme poor in Sub-Saharan Africa represented only 1 1 ercent of the worlds total in 1981, they now account for more than a third of the and China comes next contributing 13 percent (down from 43 percent in 1981). We will write a custom essay sample on Poverty and hunger or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page 3 How poor are the extremely poor? Have they become pooprer in the last three decades? Figure 44 plots the average daily per capita income of the extremely poor in the developing world as a whole, in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, and the developing world excluding SSA. As shown, the average income of the extremely poor in the developing world has been rising and steadily converging to the $1 per day poverty line. In 2010, the average income of the extremely poor in the developing world was 87 cents per capita per day, up from 74 cents in 1981 (in 2005 US dollars). If the extreme poor in Sub-Saharan Africa were not included, the average income of the worlds poor would have converged even faster to the $1 line. This increase in incomes of the extreme poor in unfortunately not seen in Sub- Saharan Africa. Between 1981 and 2010, the average income of the extremely poor has remained flat at approximately half of the $1 line in that region. Accelerating extreme poverty reduction is a huge challenge in both Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, given that there are approximately 400 million and 500 million extreme poor people in these regions respectively. The depth of extreme poverty is commonly measured by the extreme poverty gap. When expressed in dollars based on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) calculations, the extreme poverty gap represents the average amount of additional daily income needed by the extremely poor to reach the poverty line of $1 per day. Thus, from figure 45, we can see that the average gap of the extremely poor in the world is 38 cents per day, or approximately $140 per year in 2005 PPP dollars. Since there are 1. billion extremely poor individuals in the world, the aggregate extreme poverty gap amounts to approximately $169 billion dollars in 2005 PPP dollars, or approximately $197 billion 2010. Measuring poverty continues to be a barrier to effective policymaking. In many countries, the availability, frequency and quality of poverty monitoring data remain low, especially in small states and in countries and territories in fragile situations. Institutional, political and financial obstacles hamper data collection, analysis and public access. The need to improve household survey programs to monitor poverty in these countries is urgent. The main programs of Mdg 1 . A are: Department of Agriculture l. Banner Programs II. Locally-Funded Projects Ill. Foreign-Assisted Projects V. Other Programs Department of Agrarian Reform