|
|
Of the children involved in exploitative domestic labour worldwide, 90% are girls.
If pay for production workers had grown as fast as pay for chief executives, factory workers would be making an average of $114,035 a year (instead of $23,753) and the minimum wages would be $24.13 (instead of $5.15).
To purchase a computer would cost the average Bangladeshi more than eight years’ income, the average American, just one month’s wage.
The World Bank has predicted that by 2025 two thirds of the world population will not have enough drinking water. Much of the world's water corporations are privatizing supply.
In 1997, $17 billion were spent on pet food in the USA & Europe; $50 billion were spent on cigarettes and $105 billion dollars on alcohol in Europe; $400 billion were spent on drugs, $780 billion on military spending and $1 trillion on advertising worldwide.
Women account for 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people recognized as living below the threshold of absolute poverty.
In its 1994 report, the UNDP states that 'Assistance more frequently goes to strategic allies than to poor countries.' Israel for example, an American strategic ally in the Middle East, receives $176 in US aid for each poor person while Bangladesh receives only $1.70.
The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants.
English is used in almost 80 percent of all websites, although less than one in 10 people worldwide speak the language. Meanwhile, the number of computers with a direct connection to the Internet rose from under 100,000 in 1988 to over 36 million in 1998.
Only 33 countries achieved a sustained annual growth rate of at least 3 percent per capita between 1980 and 1996. During the same period, per capita growth declined in 59 countries, mainly in sub - Saharan Africa, the former Communist nations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world's poorest 2.5 billion people.
The income gap between the richest fifth of the world's people and the poorest fifth increased from 30 to 1 in 1960, to 74 to 1 in 1997.
Global consumption according to affluence consumption of the richest fifth of the population and the poorest fifth is: meat & fish 45% and 5%, energy 58% and 4%, telephone lines 74% and 1.5%, paper 84% and 1.1%, vehicles 87% and 1% respectively.
A child born in the industrial world consumes and pollutes more over his or her lifetime than do 40 children born in developing countries.
10,194,175: The number of years a person would need to work at minimum wage to earn as much money as Bill Gates.
Despite all our technological breakthroughs, we still live in a world where:
- a fifth of the developing world’s population goes hungry every night;
- a quarter lacks access to even a basic necessity like safe drinking water;
- and a third lives in a state of abject poverty–at such a margin of human existence that words simply fail to describe it.
Nearly half of all Africans live on less than what we pay for cable television.
For just $4 per year, spread over the next 20 years, each citizen of the industrialized nations can contribute to saving the lives of 1.3 million children in Ethiopia, nearly 600,000 children in Mozambique, another 475,000 children in Niger.
7 Million children die each year as a result of the debt crisis. 8,525,038 children have died since the start of the year 2000 [as of March 24, 2001].
The seven largest economies of the industrialized North – the US, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Italy and the UK – which make up less than 12 % of the world’s population, consume 43% of the world’s fossil fuel production, 64 % of the world’s paper, and from 55 to 60 % of all the aluminum, copper, lead, nickel and tin.
Nearly half of all countries who have implemented IMF sponsored ‘Structural Adjustment Programs’ have seen an average decline in real per capita education and health spending.
In Latin America 90% of fertilizer is used for purposes other than producing basic food for local people.
Even if the growth rate of the poor countries doubled, only 7 would close the gap with the rich nations in 100 years. Only 9 would reach that same level in at least 1000 n 20% of the world’s people own and consume 82.7% of the world’s wealth
The approximate number of people without sufficient food is 730 million; the amount of food that would eliminate world hunger, per annum (p.a.) is approximately 40 million tons; the amount of food aid p.a. is approximately 10 million tons; and the amount of grain fed to animals in the rich countries, p.a. is over 540 million n The income gap between the richest fifth of the world's people and the poorest fifth increased from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1997.
|
|
|
|
