• Today (2002):
  • 1.2 billion people live on less than a dollar per day.
  • 1 billion people do not have access to clean water.
  • More than 2 billion people have no access to adequate sanitation.
  • 1.3 billion people, mostly in cities in the developing world, are breathing air below the standards considered acceptable by the World Health Organization.
  • 700 million people, mostly women and children, suffer from indoor air pollution due to biomass-burning stoves, equivalent to smoking three packs of cigarettes per day.
  • Hundreds of millions of poor farmers have difficulty maintaining the fertility of soils from which they eke out a meager living.
  • In the 47 "least developed" countries of the world, 10% of the world's population subsists on less than 0.5% of the world's income.
  • Some 14 million babies and young children under the age of four starve to death each year.
  • The top 20% of the world's population consumes 85% of the world's income, the remaining 80% live on 15%, with the bottom 20% living on 1.3% of the world's income. And these disparities are growing. A generation ago, people in the top 20% were 30 times as rich as those in the bottom 20%. Now, they are more than 70 times as rich, yet will not give 0.3% of their income for the poorer 80% of humanity. The richest three persons on the planet have more wealth than the combined GDP of the 47 poorest countries. The richest 15 persons have more wealth than the combined GDP of all of sub-Saharan Africa with its 550 million people!

 

References:

Raven PH (2002) Science, Sustainability, and the Human Prospect Science 297: 954-958
Serageldin I (2002) World Poverty and Hunger--the Challenge for Science. Science 296: 54-58.