The Hindu Business Line : Renewed efforts needed to attack poverty: Report

About a sixth of the humanity still lives on less than $1 a day; and worse, there is a substantial number (162 million of the world’s poorest) that live at even less than half that pittance. Obviously, even among the poor there are differences of the extent and acuteness of poverty.

Many poor people have been left behind despite much progress claimed in reducing poverty, the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute said in a report ‘The World’s Most Deprived: Characteristics and Causes of Extreme Poverty and Hunger’.

Examining the plight of the poor living on less than 50 cents a day, the study highlights the horrendous fact that if concentrated in a single nation, the world’s ‘ultra poor’ — poorest of the poor — would comprise the world’s seventh most populous country.

Least benefits

The IFPRI report is the first to use household poverty data from 1990 to 2004 to look below the dollar-a-day poverty line and examine who the poorest people are, where they live and how they have fared over time.

The report finds that the poorest people have benefited the least from substantial reductions in poverty around the world during the past 15 years. If the decline has been equal in all the categories of poverty, the number of ultra poor would have fallen by nearly 4 per cent; in reality, it declined by less than 2 per cent or less than half the expected rate, the authors pointed out.

The report also finds that despite a global trend of poverty shifting toward urban centres, poverty is still most acute and widespread in rural areas. Poverty rates are at least twice as high in rural areas, and the ultra poor are nearly four times more likely to live in rural areas than in urban areas.

Recommendations

According to the authors, the dismally slow progress in reaching people living in ultra poverty clearly shows that ‘business as usual’ is not good enough; and reaching the poorest people within an acceptable timeframe requires all members of the international community, from policymakers to civil society, to take action. “Knowing who the poorest people are, where they live, and the unique challenges they face is an essential first step,” they assert.

Recommendations for policymakers include improving access to markets and basic services for those in remote rural areas; providing insurance to help households deal with health crises; preventing child malnutrition; and investing in education and physical capital for those with few assets.