The picture becomes clearer today with the release of data from the 2010 American Community Survey. They portray a bleak period in metro areas that swelled the ranks of the poor and punctuated a decade of economic stagnation for the middle class. Here are five trends that stood out to us in an initial scan of income and poverty data for the nation’s 100 largest metro areas:

The Great Recession raised poverty rates and reduced household incomes in the vast majority of metro areas. The deep downturn left relatively few places untouched. Among the 100 largest metro areas, poverty rates rose in 79, and median household incomes declined in 82, between 2007 and 2010.

Nearly all large metro areas ended the decade with lower median incomes than in 2000. From 2000 to 2010, incomes declined in 91 of the 100 largest metro areas, and poverty rose in 88. In many, the recession merely exacerbated a negative pre-existing trend. In the first seven years of the decade, median household income fell in 70 metro areas, and poverty rates rose in 48. Census 2000 captured U.S. households at a high-water mark economically, a far different situation than they faced in 2010, or even before the Great Recession began.

Large poverty increases brought on by the Great Recession began in housing-bust and manufacturing-oriented metro areas, but subsequently spread to other places in the South and West. Over the first two years of the downturn, Sun Belt metro areas on the front lines of the housing market collapse—in Florida, the Intermountain West, and inland California—registered the largest increases in poverty rates. They were joined by a handful of metro areas in the nation’s manufacturing belt like Indianapolis and Cleveland. Several of these places continued to experience rising poverty from 2009 to 2010, but the most affected places included a broader set of metro areas in the Southeast like Columbia, Birmingham, and Nashville; in other parts of the West like Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs; and in previously better-off regions like Austin and Omaha.

The recession increased overall poverty rates in cities and suburbs by similar degrees. From 2007 to 2010, the poverty rate in major-metro cities rose 2.9 percentage points, compared to 2.3 percentage points in suburbs. Older Northern regions like Akron, Baltimore, New Haven, and Rochester tended to experience much larger increases in city than suburban poverty, while some Southern and Western regions like Oklahoma City, Orlando, and Seattle saw poverty rates rise more in suburbs than cities. Overall, the poverty rate in cities (20.9 percent) remained far higher than that in suburbs (11.4 percent) in 2010.

Poor populations continued their decade-long shift toward suburban areas. A combination of factors including overall population growth, job decentralization, aging of housing, immigration, region-wide economic decline, and policies to promote mobility of low-income households led increasing shares of the poor to inhabit suburbs over the decade. From 2000 to 2010, the number of poor individuals in major-metro suburbs grew 53 percent, compared to 23 percent in cities. In 16 metro areas, including Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee, the suburban poor population more than doubled during that time. The recession merely served to accelerate the trend, as suburbs added 3.4 million poor from 2007 to 2010—1.4 million more poor individuals than cities.

Meager job growth and unemployment rate declines over the past year seem sure to extend many of the worrisome trends portrayed in the new data. As always, though, metro areas will chart distinct trajectories amid a sluggish national recovery. Can any manage to grow in ways that actually benefit low- to middle-income families? And knowing that things are likely to get worse before they get better, can metro areas adapt a traditionally city-focused social services infrastructure for helping the poor to the reality of increasingly region-wide needs?

Alan Berube, Senior Fellow and Research Director, Metropolitan Policy Program
Elizabeth Kneebone, Senior Research Associate, Metropolitan Policy Program

Poverty at the Metropolitan Level is a post from: Global Poverty

Although almost 40 million children returned to school this September in the United States, around the world nearly 70 million children are still denied access to quality education – and more than half of them are girls. Investing in the future of these children is a down payment on a more robust global economy, improved global health outcomes, and a more secure world. Consider that:

Worldwide, 700,000 HIV cases could be prevented each year if all children receive a primary education. Each additional year of schooling reduces a young man’s risk of becoming involved in conflict by 20%. Education increases a person’s wages approximately 10%. For girls, the rate of return for one additional year of primary education is as high as 15%.

The United States has supported Education for All by agreeing to two international development frameworks that focus on education. In 2000, the United States signed-on to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are eight international development goals agreed upon by 193 countries at the United Nations Millennium Summit. These goals aim to end extreme poverty by 2015. Two of these goals, MDGs 2 and 3 deal with education: MDG 2 calls for ALL children to receive a primary education, and MDG 3 calls for the elimination of gender disparity in both primary and secondary education at all levels.

In addition to the MDGs, the United States agreed to the Dakar Framework for Action at the World Education Forum, which was held in Dakar, Senegal in 2000. The Dakar Framework for Acton created six education goals to support achieving MDG # 2 and Education for All children by 2015. The goals support access to primary education for all as well as improving the quality of education, creating curriculums that teach students the skills they need to obtain jobs and improve adult literacy.

Since 2000, the United States’ investment in ensuring access to quality primary education has put an additional 52 million children in primary school between 1999 and 2008. However, much work remains to be done to ensure improved learning opportunities and outcomes for all. Without sustained commitments from integral donor countries like the United States, the world will not achieve the Education for All targets set for 2015. In fact, if current trends continue, there could be as many as 72 million children out of school in 2015 – more than there are today.

Fortunately, there is something that the United States can do to help achieve the MDGs and the Education for All goals – support the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). The GPE, founded by the World Bank in 2002, is the only multilateral global partnership focused on ensuring all children have access to quality education. Investing in the Global Partnership for Education is smart aid — it reduces overhead and coordinates assistance among developing and donor countries to effectively reach kids in need. For more information on the Global Partnership for Education check out this recent blog post.

The Global Partnership for Education will convene November 7–8, where world leaders will pledge new funds to education. If it receives enough funding, the GPE aims to enroll 25 million more children into primary school and reduce the number of school children who can’t reach by 50%.

Despite being a voting member of the board of directors, the U.S. has never contributed funding to Global Partnership for Education. The Global Campaign for Education is asking President Obama to pledge $375 million over three years to the GPE. The GPE’s plan is bold, so now is the time for the U.S. to invest in the future of millions of children.

by Brian Callahan
(Brian Callahan is a Campaign Associate at the Global Campaign for Education, US)

How the Global Partnership for Education Could Change the World is a post from: Global Poverty

I was recently in London, and one of the joys of that city is the second floor of Foyles bookshop, dedicated to history, international relations, economics and development. Browsing through the books there, I came across an arresting title: The Myth of Development. Written by the Peruvian Oswaldo de Rivero, it poses a startling question: what if the whole concept of development is flawed? What if the countries we refer to as ‘developing’ are not developing and will never develop?

The first part of this question is nothing new: I myself prefer the term ‘less developed country’ (LDC) to ‘developing country’ because the latter implies a progress that may not always be evident. What de Rivero postulates is that this might not be a temporary state, but that these economies will never develop.

His basic argument is that development as we know it is not inevitable or simply a matter of policy. Rather, a number of economies in different stages encountered conditions that, coupled with the right policies and some natural endowment, experienced massive material expansions that provided the basis of their modern economies. These circumstances sometimes involved violence and coercion: the slave trade, colonialism and so on. The world economy has also developed as these economies have reached ‘developed’ status; it in turn has reached a sort of maturity in which the developed and less developed countries interact according to specific power relations and rules that derive from these.

In this reality, there are a number of less developed countries which de Rivero terms ‘Non-Viable Economies’. These economies, he argues, lack the natural endowments to take advantage of any advantageous historical moment. Equally dispiritingly, he argues that the current economic and political superstructure that governs the world economy means that such a historical moment is unlikely to ever again come about.

It’s worth considering his views. There’s no doubt that the development of the poorest countries in the world has been painfully slow. It also focuses our minds very starkly on the two functions of aid: poverty alleviation in all its forms and economic development. If de Rivero is right, the goal of economic development should be abandoned outright, and as he says, these economies should focus only on the basics of human survival: food, shelter, security. Beyond this, though he doesn’t make the explicit link, it means the only viable policy for economic development is to open borders, and allow those born in non-viable economies to migrate to viable ones; to do anything else is condemn them to a life of penury.

The world of aid skepticism argues that economic development at the very least cannot really accelerated: thus, if the skeptics are correct, this is the only medium term policy for equalizing the opportunity to benefit from a world economy that power and might has shaped, at least until some other non-aid process pushes economic development forward. All of our development policies should be clear-sighted enough for us to make an argument as to what kind of approach they take and how.

Fortunately, I don’t really believe de Rivero’s arguments are useful too far beyond this thought experiment. While the pessimist that lives in most of us may be glad to hear someone articulate our worst fears, most indications are that he is wrong. Africa, home to most of the worst-off countries in the world is growing, and quite fast. The Commission for Africa stresses that optimism is the current consensus. In any case, economists have been very bad at guessing what will happen in the future, particularly when we are talking about a future that might be fifty or a hundred years down the line. Even historians are still vigorously debating why developed countries developed as and when they did – and after all some of them did so as recently as the last forty or fifty years.

One thing that is true from de Rivero’s analysis, though: the world economy is not structured in a way that helps the poorest. He takes this as a given, but it isn’t. We can change it. Trade rules, international extraction of resources and the power-based economy can all be challenged. We’re not doing nearly enough in this respect, and if economies are non-viable in the meantime, all of us in the west who benefit from these rules are partly to blame.

by Ranil Dissanayak

Is Development Always Possible? is a post from: Global Poverty

It is difficult to understand how poverty is a concept that is reproduced from cycle to cycle with the same issues always consistent regardless of the poor country studied. In 2005, The New York Times wrote a report based on a study by leading economists who had studied the phenomenon of poverty in Bangladesh, the report highlighted as key to poverty levels in one of the world’s poorest countries The fact that only 15% of Bangladesh’s population controls 2 / 3 of land and 85% had nothing. Also, new technologies applicable to the production processes were completely banned for that percentage of the population, and only had access to big capital credit and tools needed to exploit the earth through the use of new technologies.

This situation is repeated in all countries, but there’s more. Let’s talk about foreign aid. The aid from abroad are sold by the military government, the middle class and big business. In conclusion, the report set out the high fertility of the lands of Bangladesh and its potential for a society to feed 3 times higher than today.

Image However, despite these statements showed that the restriction that 85% of the population without access to the production, of course, they had no way to consume so the food produced by large capital in the fertile Bangladesh exported to developed countries, thus maintaining a constant spiral of poverty and historic resources badly distributed.

A misallocation of resources that the organs of power. In Bangladesh 80% of the members of Parliament were landowners so that the possibilities of undertaking a shift towards the eradication of poverty are virtually nil.

If we extrapolate the situation in Bangladesh to other poor countries we find the key to why global poverty will never be eradicated, again we are faced with the inherent greed of man …, even against another human being and no intention of falling into demagoguery, no choice but to bring us back to our animal condition, the largest to smallest is eaten as a matter of survival, although in the case of poverty, hunger and children die every second, this is a very vicious animal in which the life cycle is not carried out by survival, but for money.

Why is not eradicated poverty in the world? is a post from: Global Poverty

There are some concepts closely linked to the geopolitical, economic and social, with the passage of time and its structural permanence in our lives seem to have become an inherent part of historical cycles.

For over two decades about climate change as an abstract concept in the same way that the various non-governmental organizations take advantage of the interesting figure of corporate social responsibility to make major capital funds, tax-deductible funds to help the income statement , end after another of those eternal concepts through the history of world poverty.

Indeed, global poverty is part of the permanent collective subconscious, generation after generation lives, regardless of boom cycles or cycles of crisis, hunger in the world, sharing of resources and poverty.

Developed countries commit to “help” the poorest countries contemplating transfer of money policies while increasing the need to open the doors to new knowledge and technologies in developing countries to increase levels productivity in productive sectors.

No shortage of comparisons intended to awaken from their slumber to developed economies, comparisons that present generations can not be sized by the smallness of their life experiences, some certainly a concern as the number of children dying of hunger every year is equal the number of deaths caused by 50 bombs dropped on Hiroshima as, indeed terrible, but poverty and death are part of the reality of the world to the point of living with it without ya, not even, as a news .

But if there is something really unacceptable and morally despicable is that if it were not for the political and economic interests well known and, viewed from a strictly scientific perspective, end world hunger would not be so complex. Poverty is not related to a shortage of resources. According to a report in 2008 by FAO, the existing resources on the planet today would serve to sustain a world population ten times larger than today, while “developed” countries publicly funded the stoppage of food production.

Global poverty: A matter of money, no survival is a post from: Global Poverty

Yet we live in a world of unprecedented disparities in wealth. Progress towards the international development goals in areas such as poverty reduction, nutrition, child survival and maternal health has fallen far short of the targets set for 2015, even in many of the countries that have secured high economic growth. Youth unemployment has reached record levels.

While global economic integration and the spread of technology, capital and ideas have increased prosperity, growth has been uneven and unbalanced. Building a new globalisation will require not just new mechanisms for curtailing the power of financial markets, but also a more equitable pattern of economic growth and a new approach to ecology. Climate change and the growing body of evidence on environmental stress point unequivocally towards an economic system that has overstepped the ecological boundaries, with potentially devastating consequences for future generations.

So why put education on an already overcrowded agenda? Partly because education is a fundamental human right, but also because without progress in education any attempt to address the wider challenges facing governments around the world will be in vain. In an increasingly knowledge-based world economy, deep disparities between nations in education will reinforce an unequal and unsustainable pattern of globalisation. Education inequalities within countries will similarly reinforce social and economic fault lines. And without improved education there is little prospect of humanity confronting the technological and social challenges posed by the global ecological crisis.

Read Full Paper

Corporate Philanthropy and the Education is a post from: Global Poverty

Visualize Poverty is a post from: Global Poverty

Reducing poverty of Africa reversing the region’s poor economic performance. Once a forgotten continent, now, Africa is the center of attraction. Countries were astound with the firmness they showed against the appalling strike of the global financial crisis.

Poverty is a like a worldly dirt that Africa needs to clean. But by reducing poverty they have made is really tremendous. This is brought by the support for the fight by different trade companies and sectors. Profit is not the only benefit that business men get by doing business in Africa, they were also able to contribute in poverty reduction.

The improvement of Africa by ruducing poverty an other policies make Africans wake up from a long sleep. They started moving and improved their policies on investments and business. Transactions concerning business is a lot easier now compared to the old Africa. Thus, it produced more trades, job opportunities and increased wages, which are undeniably what African needs. Chances for a good living are now spared to poor Africans instead of dealing “exclusively” with corrupt government officials. Foreign investors benefits from Africa they way the African region benefits from them. The relationship is mutual. With the continuous improvement on investing and business climate, Africa and any African investment aspirants are ahead of a brighter future.

This progress is just a start. What happened are just baby steps from a giant island eying global competitiveness. The African government is still looking for tactics to completely reducing poverty.

By this time, by reducing poverty programs, Africa is so much open for any investment ideas from inside or outside the continent. By creating more trades, they are also creating job opportunities for their people. The continent as a whole is composed of a big labor force. Africans would be very instrumental in any type of businesses if they are sent to trainings and seminars. If more investment come to Africa, there are greater chances that Africans can pull their families out of poverty. And more than that, traders and investors will gain more from their investments.

Reducing poverty programs can run by make education programs. Education is another present focus of the African government. They believe that by educating people, they can step out of poverty. The government was urged to invest more on African women’s education. This will defy tribal and traditional beliefs. This will drive women away from destitution because they will be educated. In the future, they will be very essential in the maintenance and growth of the continent.

Agriculture is another key to rapid rural and urban development. Individual owned agriculture business can provide source of food to Africans. It is also a juicy fruit to improve country’s national health. The Africans’ health condition is dreadful. Most of its people are malnourished. The government is funding the agricultural sector to address the problem in poverty and health.

By: audrina
Editor: Global Poverty

Reducing Poverty Increasing Economic Performace is a post from: Global Poverty

Poverty reduction in Brazil. Ravallion repeats the exercise and finds that in Brazil, in 2005, the population who lived in households with income per person below US$1.25 a day (converted using purchasing power parity exchange rates for consumption in 2005) is 8%. When using the alternative sensitivity test method, it is 10%. Compared to India, the difference is small (2% of the population) between the two measures.

I suspect that instead of trying to calculate the number of people with less than US$ 1.25 a day, policies for poverty reduction should focus on the bottom quintile of the population: the 20% poorest group in the country.

One of my reasons is that inequality matters. Think of poverty as a relationship.

The increase in food prices excludes the poorest section of the world’s population from the market. Acquiring the majority of things that money can buy depends on your position in society’s income pyramid. Access to quality education, or good health coverage, depends not just on how much money you may have, but also on how much other people is willing to pay for them. Therefore, your wealth or poverty is relative to that of the rest of society.

But even when focusing policies for poverty reduction on the 20% poorest group in society, we must investigate what can be done to reduce inequality. A large middle class is one of the characteristics of a developed society – one where 50% of the population has access to good education and medical cover. And, according to Aristotle, the existence of a large middle class is a condition for a well administered State because it reduces polarization and violence. In well administered States the probability of economic progress increases.

Understanding why economic progress depends on the existence of a middle class becomes easier when we examine periods where it did not exist. In Antiquity, the Egyptians were capable of impressive feats of engineering, but only used their knowledge to build tombs for their Pharaohs. Centuries later, and before other civilizations, India was able to produce good quality steel – but only used it to make swords. The Romans knew about steam engines, but were content to use them simply to open temple doors. These are all examples of how a very uneven distribution of income accumulates physical and human capital for the privilege of the elite.

Gunpowder, the printing press, paper and the compass were invented during the Ming dynasty, around the 14th century. However, the industrialization that would transform China at the end of the 20th century only took place once the gap between the rich and the poor had been bridged. Economic progress is dependent on a middle class.

Politics is another area that suffers when faced with great inequality because it intensifies polarization (the apparent distance groups feel in relation to each other). Organized social movements, such as strikes, rebellions and terrorism are impossible without the notion of a group identity. Polarization feeds off an identification with the group one belongs to, as well as inequality. Amartya Sen dedicated his book, Identity and Violence to the hypothesis that most conflicts and acts of atrocity are based on the illusion of a single identity. The art of creating and nurturing hate invokes a dominant identity and suffocates other associations. And inequality simply intensifies polarization.

Defining a middle class is not so easy. Even in the US – taken as the benchmark for a middle class country – economists and sociologists are unable to define it with uniform precision.

Just as the paradox of the chicken and the egg, it is difficult to know which came first: is it the well administered State that allows equal growth, or the egalitarian society that produces good public administration?

So, what about your country? Do you think your country has a large middle class and so satisfies Aristotle’s condition of a well administered State? Do you think we should count the poor below US$1.25 or focus policies on the bottom quintile of the distribution?

by Eliana Cardoso

Poverty Reduction and the Middle Class is a post from: Global Poverty

Hunger in The World

Hunger is caused by poverty. The causes of poverty include poor people’s lack of resources, an extremely unequal income distribution in the world and within specific countries, conflict, and hunger itself. As of 2008 (2005 statistics), the World Bank has estimated that there were an estimated 1,345 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 a day or less.3 This compares to the later FAO estimate of 1.02 billion undernourished people.

The poverty solving automatically reducing hunger. Extreme poverty remains an alarming problem in the world’s developing regions, despite some progress that reduced “dollar–now $1.25– a day” poverty from (an estimated) 1900 million people in 1981, a reduction of 29 percent over the period. Progress in poverty reduction has been concentrated in Asia, and especially, East Asia, with the major improvement occurring in China. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people in extreme poverty has increased. The statement that ‘poverty is the principal cause of hunger’ is, though correct, unsatisfying.

Harmful economic systems are the principal cause of poverty and hunger. Hunger Notes believes that the principal underlying cause of poverty and hunger is the ordinary operation of the economic and political systems in the world. Essentially control over resources and income is based on military, political and economic power that typically ends up in the hands of a minority, who live well, while those at the bottom barely survive, if they do. We have described the operation of this system in more detail in our special section on Harmful economic systems.

Conflict as a cause of hunger and poverty. At the end of 2005, the global number of refugees was at its lowest level in almost a quarter of a century. Despite some large-scale repatriation movements, the last three years have witnessed a significant increase in refugee numbers, due primarily to the violence taking place in Iraq and Somalia. By the end of 2008, the total number of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate exceeded 10 million.

The number of conflict-induced internally displaced persons (IDPs) reached some 26 million worldwide at the end of the year. Providing exact figures on the number of stateless people is extremely difficult But, important, (relatively) visible though it is, and anguishing for those involved conflict is less important as poverty (and its causes) as a cause of hunger. (Using the statistics above 1.02 billion people suffer from chronic hunger while 36 million people are displaced [UNHCR 2008])

Hunger is also a cause of poverty, and thus of hunger. By causing poor health, low levels of energy, and even mental impairment, hunger can lead to even greater poverty by reducing people’s ability to work and learn, thus leading to even greater hunger.

Climate change Climate change is increasingly viewed as a current and future cause of hunger and poverty. Increasing drought, flooding, and changing climatic patterns requiring a shift in crops and farming practices that may not be easily accomplished are three key issues. See the Hunger Notes special report: Hunger, the environment, and climate change for further information, especially articles in the section: Climate change, global warming and the effect on poor people such as Global warming causes 300,000 deaths a year, study says and Could food shortages bring down civilization?

Article Source: WorldHunger.org

Hunger: What are the cause of hunger? is a post from: Global Poverty