- Crisis deepens Middle East poverty, says report, By Deena Kamel Yousef, June 24, 2010, Gulf News: “Significant parts of the Middle East are experiencing an increase in extreme poverty as the global economic slowdown increased unemployment and hunger spikes in the region, according to the 2010 United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Report released Wednesday. About 6 per cent of people in the region lived on less than $1.25 a day in 2005 compared to 2 per cent in 1990. The global economic and financial crisis, which began in the advanced economies of North America and Europe in 2007, sparked abrupt declines in exports and commodity prices and reduced trade and investment, slowing growth in developing countries, the report said…”
- Millenium Development Goals hit by crisis but still achievable, UN says, By Uwe Hessler, June 23, 2010, Deutsche Welle: “The United Nations published its 2010 Millenium Development Goals Report simultaneously in New York, Paris and Berlin on Wednesday. The food crisis of 2008 as well as the 2009 economic crisis ‘didn’t stop progress’ in reaching the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), the report said, but had made the prime goal of halving global poverty by 2015 ‘more difficult to achieve.’ The number of people in the world living on less than the $1.25 (1.05 euros) per day global poverty line had substantially decreased from 46 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2005 – the latest available figure on global hunger given in the report…”
- Fiscal crisis slows U.N. poverty fight, By Edith M. Lederer (AP), June 24, 2010, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: “The global economic crisis has slowed the fight against poverty but the developing world is still on track to meet a key U.N. goal of halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015, according to a report released Wednesday. The U.N. report cited new World Bank estimates suggesting that the crisis left an additional 50 million people in extreme poverty in 2009 and will leave 64 million impoverished by the end of 2010, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and eastern and southeastern Asia. Hunger may also have spiked in 2009 – with more than 1 billion people undernourished – as a consequence of the global food and financial crises. The effects of the crises are likely to persist with poverty rates slightly higher than they would have been had the world economy grown steadily at its pre-crisis pace, the U.N. said…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty