The Persistence of Poverty

I was reviewing UNICEF's 2010 State of the World's Children report in preparing a trend report on the global well being of children for the September/October 2010 issue of Exchange when I noticed a disturbing trend.  With all the talk about the benefits of the global economy, one would suspect that resources for children are being lifted worldwide (the “rising tide lifts all boats” theory).  However, I was reviewing the gross national income (GNI) per capita (which is an indicator of resources available per person in a country) country by country and discovered these disturbing facts:

• 76% of children under five live in countries where GNI per capita is $8 per day or less
• 52% live in countries where income per individual is $3 or less per day
• 15% live in countries with GNI per capita of $1 or less per day

To put these statistics in perspective, the GNI per capita in the United States is $134 per day. China, with all the stories about its burgeoning entrepreneurial class (pictured in glamorous clothes and hot cars), has a GNI per capita of $8 per day.  That means that the layer of well-to-do Chinese is extremely thin and that the vast majority of its 87 million children under five still live in grinding poverty.  Likewise, India, home for 127 million children under five, has a GNI per capita of only $3 per day.

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