One in eight children in Canada – 788,000 in all – are living in poverty, a new report says. Ontario remains the “child poverty capital,” with 345,000 children living in impoverished conditions, according to the 2007 national report card on child and family poverty in Canada.  “More parents are working but are still poor,” said Ann Decter, national co-ordinator of Campaign 2000, which released the report card this morning. “It does not have to be this way.” Eighteen years after the Commons passed an all-party resolution to end child poverty in Canada, little progress has been made “despite a growing economy, soaring dollar and low employment,” Decter told a Parliament Hill news conference. Having a job is no answer to escaping poverty – in 2005, 41 per cent of all low-income children lived in families where at least one parent had a full-time job, she said. Teachers see the sad consequences of child poverty every day in their classrooms - in students who are malnourished, who don’t have winter clothing and who don’t have the money to pay for field trips, said Emily Noble, president of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation.

Among the revelations in the report card:

Children of recent immigrants and single mothers as well as children with disabilities all face greater chances of growing up poor.
The average low-income family needs $9,000 to $11,000 more in annual income to raise themselves above the poverty level.
Poor families rely on food banks for their meals. In 2006, 20,900 children used food banks, double the number in 1989.
Child poverty rates are at double-digits in all provinces except for Alberta, Quebec and Prince Edward Island.
Decter was joined by MPs from the three opposition parties, who supported the call for a national strategy to set timelines and targets to reduce poverty rates for children and adults.

Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla (Brampton-Springdale) noted that the Liberals recently unveiled a five-year strategy to cut the number of Canadians living below the poverty line by at least 30 per cent and the number of children living in poverty by 50 per cent in the same time span. NDP MP Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina) called child poverty a “national shame” and said the Conservatives’ recent mini-budget contained money devoted to tax cuts that should have gone to battling poverty. “We have to decide as a country which comes first – corporate tax cuts or defeating child poverty,” Chow said.

More Toronto families are slipping into poverty at a time when families in the rest of the GTA, the province, and the country are seeing their economic prospects stabilize and even improve, says a groundbreaking report to be released today. While national incomes have surged in recent years, almost 30 per cent of Toronto families – approximately 93,000 households raising children – live in poverty, compared with 16 per cent in 1990. This economic decline is a warning that, despite outward signs of prosperity, the country's largest city is falling behind, says the report by the United Way of Greater Toronto.The dire financial plight of so many Toronto families cries out for immediate action from all levels of government, as well as business leaders, United Way president Frances Lankin said. "This is a stunning foretelling," she said. "The warning these numbers hold point to a broad assault on our economy and to our well-being." The report comes at a time when the Ontario government is about to draft a poverty-reduction strategy with goals and timetables. Lankin said the report's findings show that any provincial strategy must address Toronto's unique challenges. "If we don't have a specific strategy – with goals and timetables for Toronto – the provincial numbers will mask the depth of what is happening in this city." Although the rest of the GTA is faring well, Lankin said a corresponding growth in the number of low-income families should sound alarm bells for political leaders in the suburbs, too. "The lack of social service supports in the 905 relative to the population growth and the number of people living in poverty is going to hit hard," Lankin said.  The report, Losing Ground: The Persistent Growth of Family Poverty in Canada's Largest City, charts median family incomes in Toronto, the GTA, Ontario and Canada. It paints a sobering picture of the city against a national backdrop of high rates of employment, strong job growth and corporate profits.  Since 2000, Toronto's median family income after taxes and transfers of $41,100, the midpoint for all households raising children 17 and under, has remained relatively stagnant and is now $10,000 lower than the rest of Canada and almost $20,000 less than the rest of the GTA, the report says.  Among two-parent families, nearly one in five now lives in poverty in the city compared with about one in 10 at the national, provincial and regional level, while more than half of single-parent households in Toronto are poor. The report defines poverty as a family whose after-tax income is 50 per cent below the median in their community, taking family size into consideration. In Toronto a two-parent family with two children living on less than $27,500 is considered poor. In short, the report says Toronto families are losing ground on every measure – in median incomes, the percentage of low-income families and the sheer number of families living in poverty. Venise Bedard, a single mother of two, took a job transfer from North Bay to Toronto four years ago to improve her economic prospects, only to be laid off by her telemarketing firm six months later. Determined to make the best of her situation, she took out a $25,000 OSAP loan and went back to school to fulfill a lifelong dream to become a social service worker.  She worked part-time while studying to help pay the bills, but when it came time to do her community placement, the OSAP money had run out and she had nowhere left to turn. Unable to juggle a full-time job, school and her responsibilities as a mom, she reluctantly applied for welfare. The experience nearly broke her spirit. Bedard, 29, is collecting about $1,000 a month in welfare, while paying $925 in rent for a one-bedroom apartment near Jane St. and Lawrence Ave. She relies on her GST credit and her $500 monthly child benefit cheque for food and clothing for herself and her two children, now 9 and 2. She hopes to defy the odds and find a steady job after the Women Moving Forward program at the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre encouraged her to complete her community placement. She received her social service worker diploma this month. But for now, living on less than $19,000 a year, life is a daily struggle.  A single parent with two children in Toronto needs more than $23,375 to escape poverty. "People on welfare are stuck," says Bedard, who always supported herself in North Bay. "In Toronto, there is no money for anything but rent so you are stuck in your apartment. You can't afford bus fare to look for work. Then, if you get the job, you can't afford the transit to get there until you get your first paycheque." The report shows Toronto's poorest families have actually fared better since 2000, due to yearly increases to the national child benefit, marginal hikes in welfare rates and a rising provincial minimum wage. The poorest are defined as those families with incomes falling 75 per cent below the median, taking into consideration family size and children's ages. It shows that small public policy changes can improve the lives of families living in deepest poverty, the report says. When combined with changes such as improved access to employment insurance, beefed up labour laws, and dental and vision care for low-wage workers, poverty can be reduced even more substantially, the report adds. Any big city is a magnet for lower-income families, like Bedard's. Toronto is also a first stop for many new immigrants. It offers a vast supply of rental housing – 46 per cent of city households are renters. And it runs the largest stock of subsidized housing in the country. But few non-profit housing units have been built in the past decade that would otherwise explain the rise in poor families in Toronto. Since 2000, the city has seen a net loss of jobs, many of them well-paying and unionized, while elsewhere job creation is on the rise. At the same time jobs have been replaced by temporary, part-time and contract work that offer no job security, benefits or eligibility for employment insurance. As a result, an alarming number of households are in deep financial trouble as seen by an increase in the number of evictions, family debt and bankruptcies since 2000, a year when the crippling recession of the 1990s had clearly eased in the rest of the country, the report says. From 1999 to 2006, landlord applications for eviction due to nonpayment of rent climbed from 19,795 to more than 25,000. Also, the number of people receiving credit counselling in Toronto has almost doubled in the past six years to an average of 4,534 per month. Not surprisingly, the number of moneylending outlets has increased almost eightfold since 1995 to more than 300, largely concentrated in the low-income neighbourhoods. "This city, this region, is great," said Lankin. "But to be truly great, it needs to be great for everyone. So let's take that next step to get there."

                                   This is just a bird’s eye view to see only America suffering from poverty as far as I think it is a global issue now poverty is spreading like plague and no one can stop it sadly so it is in the hands of the present government to pull its nation from poverty and no one else can help except giving aids and that also for how long. A country can come out of poverty and enter prosperity by having job opportunities no inflation can be the answer to this wish. Thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line. Millions more struggle each month to pay for basic necessities, or run out of savings when they lose their jobs or face health emergencies. Poverty imposes enormous costs on society. The lost potential of children raised in poor households, the lower productivity and earnings of poor adults, the poor health, increased crime, and broken neighborhoods all hurt our nation. Persistent childhood poverty is estimated to cost our nation $500 billion each year, or about four percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. In a world of increasing global competition, we cannot afford to squander these human resources. The Center for American Progress last year convened a diverse group of national experts and leaders to examine the causes and consequences of poverty in America and make recommendations for national action. In this report, our Task Force on Poverty calls for a national goal of cutting poverty in half in the next 10 years and proposes a strategy to reach the goal. Our nation has seen periods of dramatic poverty reduction at times when near-full employment was combined with sound federal and state policies, motivated individual initiative, supportive civic involvement, and sustained national commitment. In the last six years, however, our nation has moved in the opposite direction. The number of poor Americans has grown by five million, while inequality has reached historic high levels.

Consider the following facts:

One in eight Americans now lives in poverty. A family of four is considered poor if the family’s income is below $19,971—a bar far below what most people believe a family needs to get by. Still, using this measure, 12.6 percent of all Americans were poor in 2005, and more than 90 million people (31 percent of all Americans) had incomes below 200 percent of federal poverty thresholds.
Millions of Americans will spend at least one year in poverty at some point in their lives. One third of all Americans will experience poverty within a 13-year period. In that period, one in 10 Americans are poor for most of the time, and one in 20 are poor for 10 or more years. 
Poverty in the United States is far higher than in many other developed nations. At the turn of the 21st century, the United States ranked 24th among 25 countries when measuring the share of the population below 50 percent of median income.
Inequality has reached record highs. The richest 1 percent of Americans in 2005 held the largest share of the nation’s income (19 percent) since 1929. At the same time, the poorest 20 percent of Americans held only 3.4 percent of the nation’s income.
It does not have to be this way.  Our nation need not tolerate persistent poverty alongside great wealth.

The United States should set a national goal of cutting poverty in half over the next 10 years. A strategy to cut poverty in half should be guided by four principles:

Promote Decent Work. People should work and work should pay enough to ensure that workers and their families can avoid poverty, meet basic needs, and save for the future.
Provide Opportunity for All. Children should grow up in conditions that maximize their opportunities for success; adults should have opportunities throughout their lives to connect to work, get more education, live in a good neighborhood, and move up in the workforce.
Ensure Economic Security. Americans should not fall into poverty when they cannot work or work is unavailable, unstable, or pays so little that they cannot make ends meet.
Help People Build Wealth. All Americans should have the opportunity to build assets that allow them to weather periods of flux and volatility, and to have the resources that may be essential to advancement and upward mobility. 
We recommend 12 key steps to cut poverty in half:

1. Raise and index the minimum wage to half the average hourly wage. At $5.15, the federal minimum wage is at its lowest level in real terms since 1956. The federal minimum wage was once 50 percent of the average wage but is now 30 percent of that wage. Congress should restore the minimum wage to 50 percent of the average wage, about $8.40 an hour in 2006. Doing so would help nearly 5 million poor workers and nearly 10 million other low-income workers.

2. Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. As an earnings supplement for low-income working families, the EITC raises incomes and helps families build assets. The Child Tax Credit provides a tax credit of up to $1,000 per child, but provides no help to the poorest families. We recommend tripling the EITC for childless workers and expanding help to larger working families. We recommend making the Child Tax Credit available to all low- and moderate-income families. Doing so would move as many as 5 million people out of poverty.

3. Promote unionization by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers signs cards authorizing union representation and establish stronger penalties for violation of employee rights. The increased union representation made possible by the Act would lead to better jobs and less poverty for American workers.

4.  Guarantee child care assistance to low-income families and promote early education for all. We propose that the federal and state governments guarantee child care help to families with incomes below about $40,000 a year, with expanded tax help to higher-earning families. At the same time, states should be encouraged to improve the quality of early education and broaden access for all children. Our child care expansion would raise employment among low-income parents and help nearly 3 million parents and children escape poverty.

5. Create 2 million new “opportunity” housing vouchers, and promote equitable development in and around central cities. Nearly 8 million Americans live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty where at least 40 percent of residents are poor. Our nation should seek to end concentrated poverty and economic segregation, and promote regional equity and inner-city revitalization. We propose that over the next 10 years the federal government fund 2 million new “opportunity vouchers” designed to help people live in opportunity-rich areas. Any new affordable housing should be in communities with employment opportunities and high-quality public services, or in gentrifying communities. These housing policies should be part of a broader effort to pursue equitable development strategies in regional and local planning efforts, including efforts to improve schools, create affordable housing, assure physical security, and enhance neighborhood amenities.

6. Connect disadvantaged and disconnected youth with school and work. About 1.7 million poor youth ages 16 to 24 were out of school and out of work in 2005. We recommend that the federal government restore Youth Opportunity Grants to help the most disadvantaged communities and expand funding for effective and promising youth programs—with the goal of reaching 600,000 poor disadvantaged youth through these efforts. We propose a new Upward Pathway program to offer low-income youth opportunities to participate in service and training in fields that are in high-demand and provide needed public services.

7. Simplify and expand Pell Grants and make higher education accessible to residents of each state. Low-income youth are much less likely to attend college than their higher income peers, even among those of comparable abilities. Pell Grants play a crucial role for lower-income students. We propose to simplify the Pell grant application process, gradually raise Pell Grants to reach 70 percent of the average costs of attending a four-year public institution, and encourage institutions to do more to raise student completion rates. As the federal government does its part, states should develop strategies to make postsecondary education affordable for all residents, following promising models already underway in a number of states.

8. Help former prisoners find stable employment and reintegrate into their communities. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. We urge all states to develop comprehensive reentry services aimed at reintegrating former prisoners into their communities with full-time, consistent employment.

9. Ensure equity for low-wage workers in the Unemployment Insurance system. Only about 35 percent of the unemployed, and a smaller share of unemployed low-wage workers, receive unemployment insurance benefits. We recommend that states (with federal help) reform “monetary eligibility” rules that screen out low-wage workers, broaden eligibility for part-time workers and workers who have lost employment as a result of compelling family circumstances, and allow unemployed workers to use periods of unemployment as a time to upgrade their skills and qualifications.

10. Modernize means-tested benefits programs to develop a coordinated system that helps workers and families. A well-functioning safety net should help people get into or return to work and ensure a decent level of living for those who cannot work or are temporarily between jobs. Our current system fails to do so. We recommend that governments at all levels simplify and improve benefits access for working families and improve services to individuals with disabilities. The Food Stamp Program should be strengthened to improve benefits, eligibility, and access. And the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program should be reformed to shift its focus from cutting caseloads to helping needy families find sustainable employment.

11. Reduce the high costs of being poor and increase access to financial services. Despite having less income, lower-income families often pay more than middle and high-income families for the same consumer products. We recommend that the federal and state governments should address the foreclosure crisis through expanded mortgage assistance programs and by new federal legislation to curb unscrupulous practices. And we propose that the federal government establish a $50 million Financial Fairness Innovation Fund to support state efforts to broaden access to mainstream goods and financial services in predominantly low-income communities.

12. Expand and simplify the Saver’s Credit to encourage saving for education, homeownership, and retirement. For many families, saving for purposes such as education, a home, or a small business is key to making economic progress. We propose that the federal “Saver’s Credit” be reformed to make it fully refundable. This Credit should also be broadened to apply to other appropriate savings vehicles intended to foster asset accumulation, with consideration given to including individual development accounts, children’s saving accounts, and college savings plans.

Our recommendations would cut poverty in half. The Urban Institute, which modeled the implementation of one set of our recommendations, estimates that four of our steps would reduce poverty by 26 percent, bringing us more than halfway toward our goal.  Among their findings:

Taken together, our minimum wage, EITC, child credit, and child care recommendations would reduce poverty by 26 percent. This would mean 9.4 million fewer people in poverty and a national poverty rate of 9.1 percent—the lowest in recorded U.S. history.
The racial poverty gap would be narrowed: White poverty would fall from 8.7 percent to 7 percent. Poverty among African Americans would fall from 21.4 percent to 15.6 percent. Hispanic poverty would fall from 21.4 percent to 12.9 percent and poverty for all others would fall from 12.7 percent to 10.3 percent.
Child poverty and extreme poverty would both fall: Child poverty would drop by 41 percent. The number of people in extreme poverty would fall by 2.4 million.
Millions of low- and moderate-income families would benefit. Almost half of the benefits of our proposal would help low- and moderate-income families.
That these recommendations would reduce poverty by more than one quarter is powerful evidence that a 50 percent reduction can be reached within a decade.

The combined cost of our principal recommendations is in the range of $90 billion a year—a significant cost but one that could be readily funded through a fairer tax system. An additional $90 billion in annual spending would represent about 0.8 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, which is a fraction of the money spent on tax changes that benefited primarily the wealthy in recent years. Consider that:

The current annual costs of the tax cuts enacted by Congress in 2001 and 2003 are in the range of $400 billion a year.
In 2008 alone the value of the tax cuts to households with incomes exceeding $200,000 a year is projected to be $100 billion.
Our recommendations could be fully paid for simply by bringing better balance to the federal tax system and recouping part of what has been lost by the excessive tax cuts of recent years. We recognize that serious action has serious costs, but the challenge before the nation is not that we cannot afford to act; rather, it is that we must decide to act.

 In 1989, a federal government all-party resolution set a goal seeking to end child poverty by the year 2000. One year shy of the millenium, with the goal no closer, they have decided to change the rules, thereby moving the goalposts. Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) is promoting a new poverty measure which asks Canadian low-income children to lower their expectations. Their new poverty line joins a crowded field ranging in generosity from the Fraser Institute's "Basic Needs Measure" to the Statistics Canada's "Low-Income Cut-Off". At one extreme, the Fraser Institute's "Basic Needs Measure" estimates the money sufficient for food, shelter and clothing to keep the family alive, and is limited to physical necessities. It excludes non-essentials like books, toys, hair-cuts, dental services and school supplies. The food budget illustrates their eagerness for subsistence (for others to live on); $25 per week for an elderly woman.The widely used Low-Income Cut-Off (LICO) is set by Statistics Canada by comparing the spending on necessities of low-income families to typical families. These relative lines increase over time with over-all income levels. This attracts the wrath of neo-conservatives because the moving lines create upward pressure on supports for low-income families. Many in the political elite consider LICO's just too generous. However, no federal politician has to live on the $23,000 that is considered "excessive" for a single mother. Instead, the government's new measure HRDC's Market Basket Measure limits our obligations to low-income children to a particular basket of goods - not a share of Canada's wealth. It acknowledges that children living on their budget will feel excluded from Canadian society because there will not be funds for thngs that many Canadian kids take for granted, like vacations and school field trips. Children living at the government's line will, over time, fall progressively further behind the Canadian norm, but will not officially be poor. Should our poverty measure increase over time by the cost of living only, or should it also reflect increasing real wealth? How should our poverty measure react to increasing average incomes? Over the last 20 years, the LICO has increased, not only to reflect inflation but also by an additional 46 per cent to reflect changes in consumption. What if we had been increasing it for prices only? The current (1997) poverty line for a family of three in a large town is $23,213, while indexed to prices only it would be $15,864. These lower poverty lines would have reduced our poverty rate by about 50%. These lower poverty lines would have virtually eliminated poverty for seniors and rendered old age security increases unnecessary. Lower poverty rates would have encouraged complacency about child poverty. The government admits that its Market Basket Measure reduces poverty immediately by about a third - without improving the standard of living of a single child. But this is only the starting point. Each year the spread will grow between a poverty measure, adjusted for prices, and one adjusted for average income.  The label "poverty" is irrelevant to the lives of children - it's deprivation, and their real and perceived life chances that matter. Low-income children have always been at greater risk of a range of outcomes which we claim to be concerned about. These include low birth-weight, school problems, low self-esteem, hindered psychological and social development. These outcomes will clearly remain if the government ceases to label them poor, but the impetus to address the problem will be reduced.In other contexts, indexation has been a very effective tool for political sleight-of-hand. The deindexation of income taxes in 1986 preordained, largely hidden, regressive tax increases. Similarly, deindexation erodes the Child Benefit, thus freeing up funds for mythical pre-election "increases for poor children" mostly replacing the funds removed by inflation. Indexation could now do for the poverty debate what it already has achieved for the Child Benefit and in the income tax system - the illusion of fairness, where advertising of progress and compassion drowns out the slowly eroding standard of living of children. The poverty line should reflect social goals for Canada. The MBM will be preferred by those who see our obligation to children as a basket - like a Christmas hamper. Those who seek equality of opportunity for children will want a relative measure which compares low-income children to the norm.The new government measure implies a new, more limited social contract. A country as wealthy as Canada is lowering its expectations not because we can't afford social supports but to make inequality acceptable. This will end Canada's traditional ideal of equality of opportunity.  Is this what the House of Commons had in mind in 1989, when it passed the unanimous resolution seeking to end child poverty by the year 2000?

 A current World Bank/IMF report shows that Ghana is consolidating gains the country has made in halving poverty towards achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The report which was released Tuesday April 8, 2008, however, indicates that most countries in Sub-Sahara Africa would not be able to half poverty and hunger by the year 2015.Ghana, together with the following countries, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda are making what the report describes as solid progress towards achieving the MDGs. According to the report, Ethiopia’s poverty headcount as of 2005 was 39%. Zambia’s was 68% as of 2004 and 70% of Sierra Leone’s population fell below the poverty line. Overall, Africa’s economic growth has risen from 2.1% in the 1990s to an average 5.6% in 2003 – 2007. About 20 African countries are facing some of the greatest challenges. These countries are characterized by low or negative growth, including enhancing security, the provision of private sector growth opportunities and building basic government capacity to put international aid to good and appropriate use. Africa depends largely on aid, which has been rising over the years. Much of the aid though is in the form of debt relief. The report says the overall aid flows from the Development Assistance Committee (DCA) and multilateral donors to Sub-Sahara Africa rose to over $40 billion in 2006, representing an increase of $6.9 billion in real terms over 2005 levels and $12.4 billion over 2004 amounts. These figures make aid essential for most countries in the region.  Significant information of note in the report is the identification of China as a new donor of growing importance. The report has identified countries in Africa that have made strong progress in strengthening development strategies and institutional frameworks for implementation. Among the countries in this category are Ghana, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania. These countries the report says are good candidates for scaled-up aid. Mali has been noted as a country that could use a moderate increase.

 As far as I think poverty is not created on its own like a fruit grows on a tree but it is self created in a country basically when there are no job vacancies when educated men/women are roaming around jobless and when they go home they see their younger siblings crying from hunger old parents ill asking for medicines then under these circumstances what is the young man/boy supposed to do when there is nothing to eat at home after struggling for months and years on end evil starts to work on a person’s mind and he is forced to go for robbery with a group of his friends. Let’s see the other side of the picture young boys who are uneducated are not also given any kind of jobs which can help them sustain and support their families. On top of that the growing inflation is breaking the backs of millions and is starving at home having nothing else to sell but utensils at home.

 The world is on course to halve extreme poverty by 2015, but Africa will fall far short of the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said . A new report by the global institutions also warned that urgent action was needed to tackle climate change, which threatens to exact a hefty toll on particularly poor countries and reverse progress in fighting poverty. The 2008 Global Monitoring Report, released ahead of the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington this weekend, said strong economic growth in much of the developing world had contributed to the decline in global poverty. It said the number of extreme poor -- those living under $1 a day -- declined by 278 million between 1990 and 2004, and by 150 million in the last five years of that period. Globally about 1 billion people still live in extreme poverty, the report added. The largest reduction in poverty rates was in regions with the strongest growth, in particular in East Asia, including emerging powerhouses China and India, the report said. Still, in Africa progress to cut poverty rates has been uneven, it said, with 18 countries showing strong economic growth of about 5.5 percent over the past decade. Twenty others in Africa, however, many hit by conflict, were trapped in low growth, averaging around 2 percent annually. The report also said that while some progress had been made in meeting eight globally agreed development goals by 2015, prospects were gravest for reducing child and maternal mortality, with serious shortfalls also likely in primary school education, nutrition and sanitation. Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, said he was personally worried about shortfalls in fighting hunger and malnutrition, which he termed "the forgotten" millennium development goal. He said high global food and energy prices had focused increased attention on the issue, but more was needed, especially since higher prices were likely to last for several years. Zoellick and IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, also pointed to dangers for growth in the developing world from recent financial market turbulence, which began with subprime mortgage market problems in the United States. Turning to the environment, the report said poverty reduction may not be sustainable if forests are lost, fisheries depleted, water or air is polluted and soil degraded. It said water scarcity and deforestation were already a factor in the developing world and are valuable assets and sources of income to poor countries. "The depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation undermines the long-term growth prospects of many developing countries," the report said. It called for coordinated global action to avert further climate change, adding that extreme climatic events such as droughts and floods in the world's poorest countries may also exacerbate conflicts and cross-country migration.

  Poverty is an important and emotional issue. Last year, the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty in the United States declaring that there were nearly 35 million poor persons living in this country in 2002, a small increase from the preceding year. To understand poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers--to look at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government deems to be poor.For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. But only a small number of the 35 million persons classified as "poor" by the Census Bureau fit that description. While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is limited in scope and severity. Most of America's "poor" live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well-off just a few generations ago. Today, the expenditures per person of the lowest-income one-fifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation.1

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio. Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person. The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions. Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception. Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher. As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children today are, in fact, supernourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier that the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II. While the poor are generally well-nourished, some poor families do experience hunger, meaning a temporary discomfort due to food shortages. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 13 percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children experience hunger at some point during the year. In most cases, their hunger is short-term. Eighty-nine percent of the poor report their families have "enough" food to eat, while only 2 percent say they "often" do not have enough to eat. Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all the poor. There is actually a wide range in living conditions among the poor. For example, over a quarter of poor households have cell phones and telephone answering machines, but, at the other extreme, approximately one-tenth have no phone at all. While the majority of poor households do not experience significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty getting medical care.The best news is that remaining poverty can readily be reduced further, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home. In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year--the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year--nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty. Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty. While work and marriage are steady ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work and marriage, remaining poverty would drop quickly.

What Is Poverty?
For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. For example, the "Poverty Pulse" poll taken by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development in 2002 asked the general public the question: "How would you describe being poor in the U.S.?" The overwhelming majority of responses focused on homelessness, hunger or not being able to eat properly, and not being able to meet basic needs.2 But if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the 35 million people identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor.3 While material hardship does exist in the United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity. The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines.

  Poverty remains the most pressing issue facing Asia and the Pacific today. Despite some spectacular progress over the last few decades, the region remains home to two thirds of the world's poor. ADB is dedicated to combating the region's poverty in all its aspects, fostering growth, social development and good governance to boost incomes and opportunities, improve living conditions, and provide the basic services many in richer countries take for granted. The impact of its work can be measured by the progress the Asia and Pacific region makes toward the Millennium Development Goals and other development objectives indicated in our partner countries' national poverty reduction strategies.

This more than succesfull idea from New York agency JWT was made to promote their search for coats for the homeless during the freezing winter in New York. The idea was to paint a giant homeless person on a wall and place coat hooks on the upper half of his body. As people hang their donated coats on the hooks.
“Donating your coat won’t stop people from sleeping on the streets, but it may stop them from dying on them.”