MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger

International Hunger Facts

World Hunger Statistics

Population WORLD: 6,865,934,913 [1]

# of people undernourished: 1,020,000,000 (1.02 billion). 14.9% [2]
% in Poverty: 1,400,000,000. 20.4%

Other Stats:

• At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.[3]
• Almost half the world (over three billion people) live on less than $2.50 a day.[4]
• 25.2% of the population lived on less than $1.25 a day in 2005, and 47% lived on less than $2.00 a day, including India, with a population of 75.6% living on less than $2.00 a day, and Sub-Saharan Africa, where 73% lived on less than $2.00 a day[5].
• The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.[6]
• China’s poverty rate fell from 85% to 16%, or by over 600 million people. China accounts for nearly all the world’s reduction in poverty – excluding China, poverty fell only by around 10% since 1981.[7]

Population DEVELOPED COUNTRIES: 1,232,100,000
# of people undernourished: 15,000,000

Population DEVELOPING WORLD: 5,141,000,000
# of people undernourished: 907,000,000, 16%

Other Stats:

• 907 million people in developing countries alone are hungry.[8]
• Based on enrolment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls. And these are regarded as optimistic numbers.[9]
• It estimates that 40% of the world’s 107 developing countries are “highly exposed” to the global crisis.[10]
• About 53 million people in developing countries will remain poor because of the world economic slowdown.[10]

Israel

Population: 7,308,800 [11]
# living below poverty line in 2008: 1,651,300, 23.7%[12]

Other Stats:

• Hunger is on the rise in Israel. Throughout the country, increasing numbers of Israelis are relying on emergency food programs to meet their most basic nutritional needs.
• According to the National Insurance Institute, approximately 783,600 children live below the national poverty line.[12]
• Over 20% of Israel’s elderly live below the national poverty line.

Download the report on poverty and income inequality in Israel by the National Insurance Institute of Israel.

Asia and the Pacific

Total Population: 4,117,547,000[13]
# of people undernourished: 642,000,000, 15.5%

East Asia: 1,386,100,000
# of people undernourished: 131,800,000, 10%

Southeast Asia: 544,500,000
# of people undernourished: 86,900,000, 16%

South Asia: 1,468,400,000
# of people undernourished: 313,600,000, 21%

Central Asia: 57,000,000
# of people undernourished: 6,500,000, 11%

Western Asia:15,900,000
# of people undernourished: 2,200,000, 14%

Other Stats:

• Asia and the Pacific region is home to over half the world’s population and nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people.[14]

Latin America and the Caribbean

Total Population: 576,102,000
# of people undernourished: 42,000,000, 7%

North and Central America: 141,900,000
# of people undernourished: 8,800,000, 6%

The Caribbean: 33,700,000
# of people undernourished: 7,600,000, 23%

South America: 368,600,000
# of people undernourished: 28,800,000, 8%

Africa

Total Population: 1,118,300,000
# of people undernourished: 245,100,000

Near East Africa: 270,100,000
# of people undernourished: 28,400,000, 11%

North Africa: 149,900,000
# of people undernourished: 4,600,000

Sub-Saharan Africa: 835,988,000
# of people undernourished: 265,000,000 32%

Central Africa: 93,100,000
# of people undernourished: 53,300,000, 57%

East Africa: 242,400,000
# of people undernourished: 86,000,000, 35%

Southern Africa: 99,200,000
# of people undernourished: 36,800,000, 37%

West Africa: 263,700,000
# of people undernourished: 36,000,000, 14%

Other Stats:

• In 2006, about 9.7 million children died before they reached their fifth birthday. Almost all of these deaths occurred in developing countries, 4/5 of them in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two regions that also suffer from the highest rates of hunger and malnutrition.[15]
• Sub-Saharan Africa will account for almost one-third of world poverty in 2015, up from one-fifth in 1990.[16]
• Sub-Saharan Africa counted 100 million more extremely poor people in 2005 than in 1990, and the poverty rate remained above 50 per cent.[17] Across the continent as a whole the number of poor people nearly doubled over the period of globalization, from 200 million in 1981 to 380 million in 2005.[18]

Europe

Population: 766,000,000
# of people undernourished:

East: 127,900,000
# of people undernourished: 3,900,000, 3%

West: 604,100,000
# of people undernourished:

Oceania: 34,000,000
# of people undernourished:

Other Stats:

• While almost no one lives under $2/day in Oceania, 72% of Australia’s Aborigines are living in poverty
• Australian Indigenous poverty ranks alongside countries as poor as Bangladesh where absolute poverty is real
• While New Zealand qualifies as one of the worlds wealthy countries, the GDP for New Zealand is $16,000 while neighboring Australia is $21,000 and the highest 20% of the population controls nearly 50% of the wealth

Children

• In developing countries, 148 million children under 5 year of age are underweight for their age.
• More than 70 percent of these children live in just 10 countries, with more than 50 per cent located in South Asia alone.[19]
• In 2008, 8.8 billion children died before celebrating their fifth birthday worldwide. Half of these deaths took place in only five countries: India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, and China. pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and AIDS-accounted for 43% of these potentially preventable deaths. [20]
• In over 45 countries for which sufficient data is available, child mortality is 1.9 times more likely among the poor than the rich.[20]
• Every year, more than 20 million low birth weight babies are born weighing less than 2,500 grams (5.5 pounds), accounting for 17 percent of all births in developing countries- a rate more than double the level in industrialized countries. These babies risk dying in infancy, while those who survive often suffer lifelong physical and cognitive disabilities.[21]
• According to UNICEF, 24,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”[22]
• This is equivalent to:
  • 1 child dying every 3.6 seconds
  • 16-17 children dying every minute
  • A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring almost every 9-10 days
  • A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring almost every 10 days
  • An Iraq-scale death toll every 16–40 days
  • Just under 9 million children dying every year
  • Some 79 million children dying between 2000 and 2007

HIV/AIDS

• Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most severely affected with 22.4 million people with HIV and 1.4 million AIDS-related deaths in 2008. Men and women of all social and economic groups are affected.[23]
• In half of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, per capita economic growth is estimated to be falling by between 0.5 and 1.2 percent each year as a direct result of AIDS.[24]
• In the countries most heavily affected, HIV has reduced life expectancy by more than 20 years, slowed economic growth, and deepened household poverty.[25]
• Infected adults also leave behind children and elderly relatives, who have little means to provide for themselves. In 2003, 12 million children were newly orphaned in southern Africa, a number expected to rise to 18 million in 2010.[26]
• In 2008, 2.7 million people became infected with HIV (reaching a total number of 33.4 million) and an estimated 2 million people died of AIDS-related deaths.[23]
• AIDS in Central Asia and Eastern Europe is primarily driven by transmission during injecting drug use.[23]

Water [27]

• Some 848 million people are not getting drinking water from improved sources, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.[28]
• Millions of women and children spend a considerable part of their day–up to several hours each day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources.[29]
• Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.
• More than 660 million people without sanitation live on less than $2 a day, and more than 385 million on less than $1 a day.
• Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
• 1.8 billion people, who have access to a water source within 1 kilometer, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 liters per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 liters of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 liters a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters day.)
• Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
• As a result of the lack of access to clean and safe drinking water as well as poor sanitation and hygiene, over 2.2 million people die each year in developing countries from preventable diseases associated with these conditions.[30]

1. U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. & World Population Clocks. 31 August 2010. Live updates available on-line at: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.
2. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009. FAO: Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations, 2009.
3. Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, The developing World is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty, World Bank, August 2008.
4. World Bank Development Indicators, 2008
5. Global Economic Prospects. World Bank, 2009
6. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007.
7. World Bank Development Indicators, 2008.
8. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008, FAO: Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations, 2008
9. Millennium Development Goals Report, United Nations 2007
10. “Global Financial Crisis Pushing Millions into Poverty in 2009 – STWR – Share The World’s Resources.” Share The World. Web. 19 Nov. 2009.
11. The World Bank. Data: Israel.
12. Data from National Insurance Institute of Israel’s 2008 Annual Survey as presented by Polak-Weiler, Dana. “One in Every Four Israelis Lives Below Poverty Line.” (2009, November 2). Haaretz.
13. United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific 2009. Table 1, Population.
14. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008, FAO: Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations, 2008
15. State of the World’s Children 2008–Child Survival. UNICEF. January 2008.
16. UNDP, Human Development Report 2007/2008: Fighting Climate Change, 2007, p. 25.
17. United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, New York, 2009, p. 7
18. Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion. The Developing World Is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty, The World Bank Development Research Group, August 2008.
19. Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition, UNICEF, 2006
20. UNICEF. (2009). The State of the World’s Children Special Edition: Celebrating 20 Years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
21. Low Birthweight: Country, Regional and Global Estimates. World Health Organization. 2004.
22. “Today, over 24,000 children died around the world.” Global Issues : social, political, economic and environmental issues that affect us all — Global Issues. Web. 28 March 2010.
23. Briefing Paper Hunger on the Rise: Soaring Prices Add 75 Million People to Global Hunger Rolls. Food and Agriculture Organization. September 2008.
24. 2008 UNAIDS Global Report on the AIDS Epidemic
25. UNAIDS. AIDS Epidemic Update 2009.
26. Total population statistics came from: Population Reference Bureau. PRB 2009 World Population Data Sheet.Total undernourished population statistics came from: The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009. FAO: Food Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations, 2009.
27. Water statistics came from: 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, pp.6, 7, 35
28. World Health Organization & UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation. (2010). Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2010 Update.
29. 2006 United Nations Human development Report. (As reported in “Water Facts,” www.water.org)
30. UN Water. 2008. Gender, Water and Sanitation: A Policy Brief.