Urban and Rural Poverty Around the World

Urban Both Rural

- Cities or slums

- Cramped housing or homeless

- Low-wage jobs, if any

- Crime

- Prostitution

- Unemployment

- Limited education

- Insufficient or complete lack of…

- social services (esp. in remote rural areas)

- Lack of gov’t-mandated social reforms

- education

-This causes:

-High fertility

-Large families cause the cycle to repeat

-Kids have low-wage jobs, cycle continues-no power to influence decisions—NO VOICE- Gender inequalities/roles

- Farms or agriculture

- Homes farther apart

- Insufficient transportation infrastructure (e.g. dirt roads)

- Fewer rural jobs for women

- Depend heavily on environmental resource- Limited access to markets- Limited access to health services- Limited access to resources

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30190162&id=1047210343

Nicaragua Statistics

• % of people living on <$1 per day: 45%

• % of people living on <$2 per day: 80%

• 50% of children drop out of school before completing the 5th grade

• 1 of 3 Nicaraguan adults cannot read or write.

• % below the poverty line: 48%

• % malnourished: 27%

• 32 public hospitals in the entire country (for 5.6 million people)

http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/data_sheets/cty_ds_NIC.html

• “Fall asleep on the streets of Managua and you’ll wake up naked.”– Magdiel Nicaragua 2009

Some StatisticsNote: Due to economic, political, and social crises in Zimbabwe, there is a

significant lack of recent, accurate statistics on poverty in the country.

• 17% children aged 0-5 years underweight (2004).

• Life-expectancy: 40.9 years (2007).• 15.3% people aged 15-49 live with

HIV/AIDS (2007).• 9.3% people 15 years and older illiterate.• Top 20% population have 56% household

income while bottom 40% have 13% (1995-2005).

Programs

• PlayPumps International: provides wells for isolated rural villages

• Ruchika School: In India, the urban beggar children “go to school” by the trains

• Mothers to Mothers: South Africa; works with women with AIDS ostracized from villages given medical attention and counseling (rural).