Tag: Poverty

Guest Post by Colin Todhunter

The World Bank says nearly 80% (560 million) of the 700 million people who were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 due to COVID policies were from India. Globally, extreme poverty levels increased by 9.3 per cent in 2020.

In 2022, it was estimated that a quarter of a billion people across the world would be pushed into absolute poverty in that year alone.

In the UK, poverty is increasing in two-thirds of communities, as millions go without heat and skip meals. Due to the ‘cost-of-living crisis’, 10.5 million are experiencing financial difficulty. An additional 13.7 million people would be at risk of financial difficulty with further increases in costs.

Living standards in the UK are plummeting. For instance, 28 per cent (up from 9 per cent pre-COVID) of UK adults said that they could not afford to eat balanced meals. Absolute poverty is set to rise from 17.2 per cent in 2021-22 to 18.3 per cent in 2023-24, pushing an additional 800,000 people into poverty.

Continue reading “Poverty and Crisis: Sucking Humanity Dry”

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

Imagine that you are an unborn spirit in heaven. God condemns you to a life of poverty but will permit you to choose the country in which you will spend your life. Which country would you choose? I would choose the United States of America.

A recent study by Just Facts, an excellent source of factual information, shows that after accounting for income, charity and noncash welfare benefits such as subsidized health care, housing, food stamps and other assistance programs, “the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in the world’s most affluent countries.” This includes the majority of countries that are members of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, including its European members. The Just Facts study concludes that if the U.S. “poor” were a nation, then it would be one of the world’s richest.

Continue reading “Some Facts Worth Knowing”

Guest Post by Brett Arends

U.S. taxpayers spend about $878 billion a year on benefits and services for people with low incomes, according to the federal government.

That’s nearly a quarter of the entire federal budget.

And they spend another $284 billion at the federal, state and local level on policing, justice and law and order, including $87 billion a year just on prisons, much of which is devoted to people who grew up in poor and at-risk circumstances.

If that sounds like a dismal situation in which everybody loses, here is some cheerful news.

Continue reading “Doing this one simple thing would take a huge bite out of poverty, research shows”

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

Poverty is no mystery, and it’s easily avoidable. The poverty line that the Census Bureau used in 2016 for a single person was an income of $12,486 that year. For a two-person household, it was $16,072, and for a four-person household, it was $24,755. To beat those poverty thresholds is fairly simple. Here’s the road map: Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen.

Continue reading “Some Ideas To Think About”

Via Human Progress

Last Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The date intentionally coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Call to Action, which saw the French anti-poverty campaigner Father Joseph Wresinski ask the international community, in front of 100,000 Parisians, to “strive to eradicate extreme poverty”.

To mark the occasion, Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, was featured in a short video assessing the current state of world poverty. Despite noting such issues as unemployment, inequality, and conflict continuing in some regions, Guterres correctly observed that since 1990 the world has made “remarkable progress in eradicating poverty.”

Continue reading “In 1820, 94% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. In 1990, 34.8%, and in 2015, just 9.6%.”

Via The Heritage Foundation

On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released its annual poverty report declaring that 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty in 2015.

We should be concerned about any American living in real material hardship, but much of what Census reports about poverty is misleading.

Here are 15 facts about poverty in America which may surprise you. (All statistics are taken from U.S. government surveys.)

• Poor households routinely report spending $2.40 for every $1.00 of income the Census says they have.
• The average poor American lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair and has more living space than the average non-poor person in France, Germany, or England.
• Eighty-five percent of poor households have air conditioning.
• Nearly three-fourths of poor households have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
• Nearly two-thirds of poor households have cable or satellite TV.
• Half have a personal computer; 43 percent have internet access.
• Two-thirds have at least one DVD player
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
• One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.

(The above data on electronic appliances owned by poor households come from a 2009 government survey so the ownership rates among the poor today are most likely higher.)

Continue reading “15 Facts About Poverty in US Government Buries”