Where Do the World’s Poor Live?

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.voanews.com/content/poverty-projections-28aug12/1496954.html

Most of the world’s poor do not live in poor countries. New research says nearly 80 percent are actually in middle income countries. Two billion poor people – those who live on two dollars a day or less – live in middle income countries. That compares to 500 million in low income countries.

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“Many countries over the last decade, in particular, have gotten much better off in average income. But poverty hasn’t fallen as much as one might expect or hope. All of this speaks to a lot of the current debates about the rising importance of inequality around the world and whether debates around the U.N. poverty goals that are due for renewal of some kind in 2015 – whether issues about inequality – ought to have much higher focus,” he said.

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He estimated the cost of eliminating extreme poverty to be about 60 to 80 billion dollars a year. That’s about 0.3 percent of the world’s GDP, or gross domestic product, which is the value of final goods and services produced in countries.

Sumner said that with the “distribution of global poverty away from the poorest countries to middle income countries, a new approach to understanding and tackling extreme poverty is required.” He added that this includes a more equitable distribution of the “benefits of economic growth and public spending…on the chronic, long-term poor wherever they live.”

Only 0.3% of the world's GDP to eliminate extreme poverty. Blows my mind.

[gopiscrap]

1. Interesting

[BOG PERSON]

2. take a look at how countries are ranked according to income

http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-lending-groups