(The following article is from the April 1-15, 2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

By Kimball Cariou

     We are often told that "a rising tide lifts all boats" - in other words, increasing totals of global wealth raise everyone out of poverty. Yet while the number of ultra-rich is growing, billions of people remain trapped in dire poverty. The reality is that under capitalism, wealth is concentrated in fewer hands while misery increases, unless this process is countered by working people to win basic reforms and revolutionary change.

     One useful collection of data on global economic disparities is a website operated by Anup Shah. The "Poverty Stats and Facts" section of this website is found at http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats. Here are some excerpts.

     Almost half the world - over three billion people - live on less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

     More than 80 percent of the world's population lives in countries where income differentials are widening. 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.

     According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die each day due to poverty. Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the nutrition deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

     If current trends continue, the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children.

     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. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.

     Infectious diseases continue to blight the lives of the poor. An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are 350-500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.

     Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.   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 one kilometre, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 litres per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 150 liters a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters per day.

     Some 1.8 million children die each year as a result of diarrhoea, and 443 million school days are lost annually from water-related illness. Close to half of all people in developing countries suffer from health problems caused by water and sanitation deficits. Millions of women spend several hours a day collecting water.

     The costs associated with health spending, productivity losses and labour diversions, are greatest in some of the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa loses about 5% of GDP, or some $28.4 billion annually, a figure that exceeds total aid flows and debt relief to the region in 2003.

     Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion live in poverty. Among the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, 640 million are without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, and 270 million lack access to health services.

     Worldwide, 1.4 million children die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Another 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized, and 15 million children are orphaned due to HIV/AIDS.

     Rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than US$1 a day and a similar share of the world population suffering from malnutrition. However, urbanization is not synonymous with progress. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions.

     In developing countries some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on biomass - fuelwood, charcoal and animal dung - to meet their energy needs for cooking. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 80 percent of the population depends on traditional biomass for cooking, as do over half of the populations of India and China.

     Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels claims the lives of 4000 people a day, or 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five.

     In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption, compared to just 1.5% for the poorest fifth. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of 41 heavily indebted poor countries (567 million people) was less than the wealth of the world's seven richest people combined in that year.

     The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world's financial assets. In other words, about 0.13% of the world's population controlled 25% of the world's financial assets in 2004.

     In 1960, the 20% of the world's people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20%. By 1997, the differential was 74 times as much.

     In 2008, the World Bank announced a new global poverty line of $1.25 a day. It also reported that while there has been some reduction in world poverty over the last couple of decades, this gain almost exclusively comes from China, where the poverty rate fell from 85% to 15.9%, or by over 600 million people.

     Anup Shah's website lists various categories of spending in the developed countries, ranging from cosmetics in the United States ($8 billion annually) to the yearly total of worldwide military budgets ($780 billion, actually nearly $1 trillion by 2010).

     Shah and others have compared military expenditures to the cost of achieving universal literacy and health care, access to clean water, and other urgent development priorities. But their figures are often out-dated.

     A current comparison would consider the costs of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations in 2000, as a first step towards eliminating extreme poverty by the year 2015.

     Target 10 of the MDGs is to "halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation". The United Nations estimated that the spending on new infrastructure in developing countries to meet this target is $42 billion for water and $142 billion for sanitation, for an annual total over ten years of $18 billion. To maintain these services would require annual spending of $54 billion.

     In other words, the world spends 14 times more each year on military budgets than it would cost to provide water and sanitation for half of those who lack these necessities.

     US economist Jeffrey Sachs, who headed the UN Millennium Project, argues that to reach these goals, development aid must be raised from $65 billion globally as of 2002 to between $135 and $195 billion a year by 2015. This could be achieved by redirecting less than 20% of global military spending.

     Clearly, the human race does have the wealth and resources to tackle the global poverty crisis, along with the looming catastrophe of unhecked greenhouse gas emissions which are creating chaotic climate change. The barrier to real progress is the economic and social system which dominates most of the planet. The capitalist system of private ownership ensures that a tiny handful of wealthy billionaires reap enormous benefits from their control of resources, including the huge profits sucked out of the military-industrial complex which helps to maintain the power of the leading imperialist countries.