Facts & Figures

Extreme poverty, deep poverty, abject poverty, absolute poverty, destitution, or penury, was defined by the United Nations (UN) in its 1995 report of the World Summit for Social Development as “a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services.” Historically, other definitions have been proposed within the United Nations.

In 2018, extreme poverty widely refers to an income below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (in 2011 prices, equivalent to $2.16 in 2019), set by the World Bank. In October 2015, the World Bank updated the international poverty line, a global absolute minimum, to $1.90 a day. This is the equivalent of $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression “living on less than a dollar a day”.

The second goal in the United Nations Millennium Development Goal is to achieve Universal Primary Education, more specifically, to “ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.”

“Educating children gives the next generation the tools to fight poverty and prevent disease, including malaria and AIDS.” Despite the significance of investing in education, a recent report, Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All: Findings from the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children – produced by UNESCO Institute for Statistics and UNICEF found that the world has missed this 2015 target of universal primary education, and there are currently 58 million children, of primary school age, out of school worldwide.

Source: UNICEF – Monitoring the situation of children and women