What is Poverty in the Majority World?

Welcome to Poverty

To truly begin to capture the reality of poverty in the majority world, come with me on a journey to see if together; we can begin to imagine what it is like for over 800 million people worldwide. Imagine that you wake up in a remote place you do not know. You have no cell phone and no passport – no identification of any kind.  

You quickly realize that you are not alone but you are there with your family. Your spouse, children, and parents are around you.  Together, you walk for about half a day before finding a village. You have no money and you cannot access credit or acquire loans. After some conversations you find a job that will pay you $3.00 a day, and you can start tomorrow.  

Reality Sets In

Your thoughts turn to questions. How do you feed your family? Where will you get safe water to drink?  What about education for your children? Where will you find shelter? Everyone you’ve encountered is taking care of their own family, and no one has a spare room. In fact, no one even knows what a spare room is. You try to find something to eat, but food is scarce. The people tell you they are lucky to have enough to eat one meal a day. Each of your family members hold their tummies, feeling hunger pangs as you sit under a tree on the outskirts of the village.  

You wonder how long it will take to have enough money to get food for your family. You wonder how you will be able to afford to put a permanent roof over the heads of your loved ones as you scrounge for pieces of tin, cardboard, or branches; discarded pieces of fabric, anything that might help you build a shelter.  

You’re thirsty, but the only water available is in a nearby pond. It’s stagnant and you watch as cows and dogs defecate in it. You look for a toilet but there is none to be found. Hunger, thirst, exclusion, and disempowerment are all realities for your family. Will you ever have enough? How you ever be able to get more, or will you be condemned to this life forever? Is it determined that generations of your family will be trapped in the same hopeless cycle of poverty? 

Cost of Living

This may seem like a dystopian novel, far-fetched and unimaginable, but this is reality for far too many people living in the Majority World today. If you explore the website Our World in Data, you will see that about 1 in 10 people live in this kind of poverty.   

Since we’re talking about statistics, let’s look at a few more: 84% – yes, 84% of the population of the world live in poverty – meaning they are living on less than $40 CAD a day. That’s about 6.7 billion people out of about 8 billion who live on the planet.  

For those of you who think about income on a monthly basis – that’s about $1,200 a month. How many of us are living on about $14,000 Canadian a year? This is the reality for 84% of the world’s population.It’s easy to dismiss this and say, “Well, the cost of living in so many places is so much less than it is here – it’s all relative.” But that’s not the truth, and it is certainly not the end of the story.  

Extreme Poverty

Extreme poverty is another story. Of those 6.7 billion people who live in poverty, about 831  million of them live in extreme poverty. To put that in numbers that we understand, this means that 831 million people live on about $3 a day, which is about $90 a month and about $1,080 a year in Canadian dollars. Yes –you heard that right $1,080 A YEAR! 

To put the reality of extreme poverty in perspective, in West Africa where many people experience this level of extreme poverty, a bag of rice to feed a family of 4 for a month costs nearly $96. How would you begin to put a roof over your head or food on the table? It would not be possible.   

When we talk numbers of people, 831 million people is a large number, but it’s also hard to grasp. To bring it into perspective – it’s almost 16 ½ times the population of Canada or about twice the population of the US.  

Poverty Is Complex

Poverty in the Majority World affects more than just a few people in one geographical location – it can often affect entire countries. What it means practically is a lack of access to the necessities of life: from lack of access to clean water, to lack of food, latrines, education, medical care, and much more. Things we take for granted in the Western World are unheard of in other countries because of widespread poverty. 

Poverty does not have to be the end of the story. There are things that can be done to spark hope in the midst of poverty. Extreme poverty is complex. Though it is not simple, when individuals work together with those most affected, sustainable change is possible.

To learn more about how World Hope International is bringing hope and alleviating poverty in hard places you can read about how real lives are impacted in our stories of transformation.