More
than 10% of the world’s population (or over 700 million) live in extreme
poverty – Why?
1.
Inadequate Access to Water/Food
More
than 2 billion people have no access to clean water at home and over 800
million suffer from hunger. No water and/or food leaves them with no strength
or energy for work.
2.
Little or No Access to Jobs
This
may be a “no brainer”. Without a job or a way to make money, people will face
poverty. Dwindling productive land, overexploitation of resources, conflicts
leave many with no jobs or means to secure a future. A classic case is
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A nation rich with resources but its people
extremely poor.
3.
Conflict
Conflict
causes poverty. Large scale, protracted violence like in Syria, Iraq, Yemen or
Libya will grind a society to a halt, destroy infrastructure and then cause
people to flee to Turkey or Europe. In Syria, around 70% of entire population
live below the poverty line (say, USD 1.90 per day). Women and children are
worst affected.
4.
Inequality
There
are many different types of inequality in the world. Economic to social
inequalities. No matter what, it generally means no access to resources to lift
a family out of poverty.
5.
Poor Education
Most
of the extremely poor don’t have an education. Why? A number of barriers
prevent children from going to school – affordability, work in farms/factories
to supplement household income or gender bias, especially for girls. UNESCO
estimates 171 million people could be lifted out extreme poverty if they left
school with basic reading skills.
Then
there is climate change, lack of infrastructure and ineffective governments
that perpetuate poverty.
What
about Malaysia?
Philip
Alston a UN expert, caused a furore by saying Malaysia’s official poverty
figure (0.4%) is “vastly” undercounted. The national poverty line income is way
too low (RM980). Poverty rate could actually be between 15-20%.
Khazanah
Research Institute (“KRI“)
wrote in its 2018 report that poor households rose to 1.54 million in 2016 from
1.08 million in 1995 (based on 60% of median household income). We need a
classification that is right before we address policies! And new inequalities
are emerging – vertical inequality, regional and intra-ethnic rather than
inter-ethnic inequality. Not getting this right lead political parties to
create unnecessary tension of race and religion.
Reference:
2.
KRI: Realistic poverty measures show more Malaysians poorer now, 25 June 2019, Malay Mail
3.
Malaysia’s poverty problem needs reframing, 25 August 2019, Free Malaysia Today
4.
Poorer than we think: Malaysia’s official poverty figures ‘vastly’
undercounted, says UN expert, 23 August 2019, The Star
5.
United Nations Development Programme www.my.undp.org
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