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Poverty • Children under age 18 make up 49 percent of the population of the world's least developed countries, compared with 21 percent of the population of the world's industrialized nations. • More than 2 billion people lack access to electricity and modern forms of energy. • More than 1 billion (one in five) people live on less than U.S.$1 a day. • Every day, 1,600 women and more than 10,000 newborns globally die due to complications that could have been prevented. • The annual world economy breaks down like this: Low Income, $825 or less: 37%
• More than 10 million children under age 5 die each year. Two-thirds of these deaths — more than 6 million deaths every year — are preventable. • Approximately 41 percent of the world's poor people live in India. Sources: www.unicef.org, www.unep.org, www.one.org, www.who.int, www.freeworldacademy.com, www.nationmaster.com • An estimated 130 million of the world's 15- to 24- year-olds cannot read or write. • There are 781 million illiterate adults worldwide, and 64 percent of them are women. • Nearly 115 million children are out of school. Globally, some 53 percent of the children out of primary school are girls, meaning that for every 100 boys out of school, 115 girls are in the same situation. • Of the 22 countries where more than half the population is illiterate, 15 are in Africa. • Only 14.4 percent of GDP per capita is spent on primary education worldwide. • About 75 percent of children out of primary school in developing countries have mothers who did not go to school. Sources: www.worldbank.org, www.unicef.org, www.nationmaster.com Back to Top • Malaria kills approximately 1 million children per year, many of them under age 5 and most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. • One in every six infants is not immunized against tuberculosis. • One in every four children is not immunized against measles. • Only 50 percent of the world's infants are fully immunized against hepatitis B. • Only 64 percent of newborns are protected against tetanus. • Malaria, together with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, is one of the major public health challenges undermining development in the poorest countries in the world. • Measles remains a leading cause of death among young children, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine for the past 40 years. • More than 95 percent of measles deaths occur in countries with per capita gross national income of less than U.S.$1,000. • There are 1.5 million diarrheal-related deaths per year among children under 5. • Children under age 5 account for less than 10 percent of the world's population, but suffer from 40 percent of the diseases attributed to environmental factors. • Acute respiratory infections annually kill an estimated 2 million children under the age of 5. • About 1.8 million people, most of whom are children, die annually of food-borne diseases. • Approximately 90 percent of child deaths worldwide occur in the first year of life. Sources: www.who.int, www.unicef.org
• Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 70 percent of the total world HIV-positive population. • Of the estimated 2.3 million of children under 15 living with HIV, 2 million live in sub-Saharan Africa. • In 2005, an estimated 2.8 million people died of AIDS-related causes. Approximately 380,000 of these were children under 15. • Currently, less than 10 percent of HIV-positive children in need of treatment are being treated. • More than 40 percent of new infections occur among the group of young people ages 15-24. • Approximately 15.2 million children under age 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS. Of these, 12 million live in sub-Saharan Africa. • Each day, 1,500 children worldwide become infected with HIV, the vast majority of them newborns. • About 17.3 million women comprise nearly half the total number of people living with HIV, and 76 percent (13.2 million) of women with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. • Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most affected region in the world. Two-thirds of all people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa; in 2005, 24.5 million people there were living with HIV. • In 2005, 40.3 million people were living with HIV. • More than 10 percent of the 40.3 million people living with AIDS were from new infections in 2005 — and half of that 10 percent are children. • Less than 10 percent of HIV-positive pregnant women receive drug therapies to prevent the transmission of HIV to their infants. • About 11,000 new HIV infections occur daily worldwide. Of those, 50 percent are women and more than 40 percent are young people ages 15-24. • Every 14 seconds a child is orphaned by AIDS. • Approximately 9.8 million young people, ages 15-24, are living with HIV/AIDS. Sources: www.one.org, www.unicef.org, www.unaids.org, www.thedatareport.org
• One person in seven goes to bed hungry every day. • Approximately 854 million people across the world are hungry. • Every day, nearly 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. That amounts to one child every 5 seconds. • About 5.6 million or 53 percent of child deaths worldwide are related to under-nutrition. • Approximately 146 million or 27 percent of children under age 5 in developing countries are underweight. • Nearly 17 percent of babies in developing countries are born with a low birth weight compared with only 7 percent of babies in industrialized countries. • More than 6 million children die from malnutrition each year. • Worldwide, 161 million preschool children suffer chronic malnutrition. • Already 40 percent to 50 percent of the world's populations are undernourished and there are 50 million starvation-related deaths each year. Sources: www.one.org, www.bread.org, www.unicef.org, www.who.int, www.unep.org
Environment Facts • More than 3 million children under age 5 die each year from environment-related causes and conditions. • Diarrhea kills an estimated 1.6 million children each year, caused mainly by unsafe water and poor sanitation. • More than 5 million children per year die from illnesses and other conditions caused by the environments in which they live, learn and play. • Each year, acute respiratory infections kill an estimated 2 million children under age 5. As many as 60 percent of acute respiratory infections worldwide are related to environmental conditions. • Nearly 1 million children under age 5 died of malaria in 1998. Up to 90 percent of malaria cases are attributed to environmental factors. • Half the developing world does not have access to proper sanitation. • About 40 percent of the world's 400 million school-age children are infested with intestinal worms due to the lack of sanitation. • About 6 million people are blind from trachoma, a disease caused by the lack of water combined with poor hygiene practices. Studies found that providing adequate water supply could reduce the infection rate by 25 percent. • One billion people — 17 percent of the world's population — live on land likely to be dramatically changed by rising waters, with low-lying countries hardest hit. • More than 2 billion people globally lack access to electricity and modern forms of energy. • The number of people living in countries where cultivated land is critically scarce is projected to increase from 448 million in 2005 to between 559 million and 706 million in 2025. Sources: www.who.int, www.un.org, www.childinfo.org, www.unep.org, www.populationaction.org • An estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labor. • About 211 million children between ages 5 and 14 can be found working. • Globally, one in six children work. • Worldwide, 126 million children work in hazardous conditions. • Every year more than 1 million children get pulled into the sex trade. • An estimated 8.4 million children work under horrific circumstances: forced into debt bondage or other forms of slavery, prostitution, pornography, armed conflict or other illicit activities. Sources: www.unicef.org, www.ilo.org, www.crin.org, www.woman.ch
Religion Facts • Religion around the world is broken down like this: 33 percent of the people in the world are Christians (2.1 billion). • Women make up 55 percent of the adult born-again population. • Brazil is the largest Catholic country in the world. • Approximately 85 percent of Christians make their commitments to Christ between ages 4 and 14. Sources: www.adherents.com, www.barna.org, www.nationmaster.com, www.viva.org
• An estimated 300 million children worldwide are subjected to violence, exploitation and abuse including the worst forms of child labor in communities, schools and institutions. • More than 2 million children died as a direct result of armed conflict in the 1990s. More than three times that number have been permanently disabled or seriously injured. And more than 1 million children have been orphaned or separated from their families. • Worldwide, an estimated 40 million children under age 15 suffer from violence, abuse and neglect. • An estimated 1.2 million children — both boys and girls — are trafficked each year into exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflict or commercial sex work. Sources: www.unicef.org, www.ispcan.org, www.ilo.org
Population Facts • In 2006, the world's population was 6.55 billion people. • Approximately 5.1 billion people live in the developing world. The developed world, which consists of about 57 countries with a combined population of about 1 billion, is less than one-sixth of the world's population. • One in five people is an adolescent between 10 and 19 years of age; 85 percent of adolescents live in developing countries. • The world population is growing by about 1.2 percent, or 76 million people, per year. • Approximately 48.8 percent of the world's population lives in urbanized areas. • One birth occurs every 8 seconds, while one death occurs every 11 seconds. The world population has a net gain of one person every 12 seconds. • Every year, 55 percent of all births in the developing world (excluding China) go unregistered, meaning more than 50 million children begin life with no identity. Sources: www.bread.org, www.who.int, www.populationaction.org, www.worldbank.org, www.census.gov, www.unicef.org |
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