Poverty facts for kids

A boy playing with garbage in Jakarta, Indonesia.

A homeless woman with her dog in a street of Rome

Poverty means not having enough money for basic needs such as food, drinking water, shelter or toileteries. Many people in different countries live in poverty, especially in developing areas of West and Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Caribbean and some parts of Asia.

There are different ways to measure poverty. The World Bank says that extreme poverty is when someone has less than US$1 a day to live on (that dollar is an ideal one). It has been changed to rule out certain effects such as inflation, meaning that prices of things rise higher than what a person is paid, and other price level differences. Moderate poverty is when people have to live on less than $2 a day. In the year 2001, 1.1 billion people were seen as extremely poor, and 2.7 billion were seen as moderately poor.

In the developed world this does not apply. There, many people are seen as the working poor. They have a job, but do not earn enough money for basic things such as food and a home. In most developed countries, people without jobs receive money from the government, but this is often less than they need for a comfortable life.

There are different ways to tell if a country is rich or poor. The Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, and Human Development Index, or HDI, are two of those measures. Gross Domestic Product is the money made from trade from inside the country.

HDI, meaning the Human Development Index is a different matter. It is determined by life expectancy and adult literacy rates. Places in Africa like Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Mali are the poorest, with Sierra Leone having the lowest HDI ranking in the world.

Poverty is a hurdle in the way of a country's progress. One way of helping lower poverty is by educating poor people so that they can start contributing to a nation's economic development. Education teaches the poor about their rights and may show them the path to become an important part of the growth and expansion of the country. Vienna Declaration also tells this fact.

One of the most important things that is needed to make a country richer is for the Government to want to help poor people do better. Without this, it is hard for people to become better off.

“The poor are starving and their hunger keeps them in poverty.” a quote from Nathan Jones

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Images for kids

An example of urban poverty in this slum in Jakarta, Indonesia
Percentage of population suffering from hunger, World Food Programme, 2008
Children of the Depression-era migrant workers, Arizona, 1937
Life expectancy has been increasing and converging for most of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa has recently seen a decline, partly related to the AIDS epidemic. Graph shows the years 1950–2005.
This graph shows the proportion of world population in extreme poverty 1981–2008 according to the World Bank.
These children and thousands others like them make their living by picking garbage at Lucknow, India (2007) – Image by: Masood Rezvi
Street child in Bangladesh. Aiding relatives financially unable to but willing to take in orphans is found to be more effective by cost and welfare than orphanages.
Affordable household toilets near Jaipur, Rajasthan
The urban poor buy water from water vendors for, on average, about five to 16 times the metered price.
A beggar in the streets of Beijing, China in 2005. Disability discrimination is a major cause of extreme poverty.
A large, modern fertilizer spreader
Hardwood surgical tables are commonplace in rural Nigerian clinics.
Local citizens from the Jana bi Village wait their turn to gather goods from the Sons of Iraq (Abna al-Iraq) in a military operation conducted in Yusufiyah, Iraq.
A family planning placard in Ethiopia. It shows some negative effects of having too many children.
Afghan girl begging in Kabul.
Information and communication technologies for development help to fight poverty.
A poor child walks with one sandal.
St. Francis of Assisi renounces his worldly goods in a painting attributed to Giotto di Bondone.
A sewage treatment plant that uses solar energy, located at Santuari de Lluc monastery, Majorca.