Poor? Who's poor? Poverty is down

The proportion of people living on less than $1 a day decreased from 40 to 21 per cent of the global population between 1981 and 2001, says the World Bank's latest annual report.

The president of the bank, James Wolfensohn, said in his overall review that the past year had brought with it signs of hope and progress, but it had also brought signs of concern in the fight against global poverty.

On a positive note, new data this year showed that the number of poor people continues to fall. Development indicators were clearly improving in countries that had laid good foundations for growth.

The progress, though, was uneven across the globe. Growth in East Asia had meant that there were 500 million fewer people living below one dollar a day in 2001 than in 1981.

The number of poor people had also fallen in South Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa, though less dramatically than in East Asia.

However, the absolute number of poor people had risen in African, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Central Asia.

Wolfensohn recalled his statement at the last annual meeting that the world he 'saw today was a world out of balance.' Of the six billion people of the world today, one billion people live in wealthy countries. They accounted for 80 per cent of the world's gross domestic product, while the other 5 billion have 20 per cent.

While rich countries spent $700 billion a year on defence and transferred $325 billion to agriculture, they devoted only $68 billion as developmental aid.

These global imbalances are reflected in the daily lives of poor people around the world. Two billion people have no access to clean water, 115 million children never get the chance to go to school, and some 38 million people -- 95 per cent of them in developing countries -- are HIV-positive, with little hope of receiving treatment.

Most of the global development goals will not be met in most countries by the 2015 deadline, the report said.

"So the world is at a tipping point: either we in the international community recommit to delivering on the goals, or the targets we set in a fanfare of publicity will be missed, the world's poor will be left even further behind, and our children will be left to face the consequences," said Wolfensohn.

Poor People's Campaign

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized the Poor People's Campaign to address issues of economic justice, specifically for sanitation workers to receive a $9 per hour minimum wage opposed to their unjust $1.70 wage, which eventually led to the culmination of the campaign to the worker's strike and a march in Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States. The march originated in Marks, Mississippi. From there, Dr. King crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington – engaging, if need be, in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol—until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection". Prior to the completion of the campaign, Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor": appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity", but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

On April 3, 1968, King prophetically told a euphoric crowd:

"It really doesn't matter what happens now.... some began to... talk about the threats that were out – what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers.... Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

A recent issue of Time Magazine explained that King empathized more and more with all people suffering from poverty in the late 1960s. As a result, he started trying to help not just Blacks but all disadvantaged Americans. When asked why he wanted to help whites from places like the Appalachian mountains, King answered: "Are they poor?"

The 1968 Poor People’s Campaign did not focus on just poor black people but addressed all poor people of every minority. Poor Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and even poor whites were included in the campaign. King labeled the Poor People’s Campaign the “second phase,” of the civil rights struggle. The “first phase” focused on the segregation problems. Both phases were addressed in a non-violent manner. The SCLC and Dr. King (before his assassination) planned for the Poor People’s Campaign to be the largest, most widespread civil-rights movement. They set goals high, such as aiming for 1500 protesters to lobby in Washington D.C. to Congress for an “economic bill of rights” (EBoR). Under the EBoR the Poor People’s Campaign asked for a $30 billion anti-poverty package that would include an increase in housing for the poor and a guaranteed annual income for the poor people across the nation. On April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated, but the campaign carried on in his honor. Not long later, on May 12, 1968, the demonstrators showed up in Washington D.C. to start the Poor People’s Campaign. For the next two weeks protestors campaigned at various federal agencies pushing for the EBoR, which would benefit all poor people across the country. The campaign came to an end in mid-June and the EBoR was never passed.

37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty

Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening

The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky.

The Lumpkins live at the definition of the back of beyond, in a hollow at the top of a valley at the end of a long and muddy dirt road. It is strewn with litter. Packs of stray dogs prowl around, barking at strangers. There is no telephone and since their pump broke two weeks ago Candy has collected water from nearby springs. Oblivious to it all, her five-year-old daughter Amy runs barefoot on a wooden porch frozen by a midwinter chill.

It is a vision of deep and abiding poverty. Yet the Lumpkins are not alone in their plight. They are just the negative side of the American equation. America does have vast, wealthy suburbs, huge shopping malls and a busy middle class, but it also has vast numbers of poor, struggling to make it in a low-wage economy with minimal government help.

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.

Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.

Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.

For a brief moment last year in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina brought America's poor into the spotlight. Poverty seemed on the government's agenda. That spotlight has now been turned off. 'I had hoped Katrina would have changed things more. It hasn't,' says Cynthia Duncan, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.