Poverty's Children
Poverty rears its ugly head in the most peculiar of places. It exists where one would expect it to, in struggling third-world countries. But it also exists, on a scale hard to credit, in countries with booming economies whose citizens live for the most part with an excess of consumer goods. That we permit the degraded human condition of poverty to exist in countries with sufficient wealth to adequately care for all its citizens is a rather damning and alarming condemnation of universal lack of compassion.The largest global survey yet conducted, which encompassed the querying of 53,749 individuals living in 68 countries on five continents has given us some surprising statistics related to those very individuals' perceptions regarding the situations in which they live and their studied opinions of their place in their society. Gallup International Association has given us, with the results of this massive survey, something to think about with its publication "Voices of the People 2006", released by Random House.
Overall, the five thousand pollsters gathered data from their thousands of contacts which indicate that the most pressing problem identified by their interviews is overwhelmingly that of the condition of poverty. The percentage of people in various countries underlining poverty as the single most worrisome issue they could identify tells us that this condition continues to be the most serious one facing today's world.
Setting aside the worrying spectre of terrorism and environmental collapse both of which have the enduring potential to make life as we know it on this planet even more of a trial than so many already find it, poverty leads even in countries such as France, Germany, Britain, Canada and the United States. The big surprise is that some countries whose indigent population is well known by reputation, rate poverty much lower than the above-noted countries, according to their interview-representatives.
India, for example, that wildly populous country of over a billion souls, identifies poverty only at 9% to Canada's 26%. And Thailand's responders gave poverty a trifling 4% rating, as opposed to the United States's 19%. Odd in the extreme, but the figures tell the story. Sometimes, one supposes, perception is reality. Worldwide, poverty is pointed out as the number one concern, at 26%, followed by terrorism at 12%, and in third place, unemployment at 9%. There's a wide differential in importance of concern between the number one and the number 2 concerns, leaving poverty at the top, seriously unchallenged by any other single issue of concern.
The issues of Wars and Conflicts, Economic Problems, Drugs and Drug Use, Environmental Issues, Globalization/Fairer World Trade, HIV/AIDS, Other Health Issues, Crime, Corruption, for example, are well behind the first three issues noted above. There is a surprising similarity country-to-country, in respondents' listings in the hierarchy of concerns.
Still, one of the most unexpected results comes perhaps tellingly, from the wealthiest nation on earth, and perhaps also the most indebted nation on earth, under its current administration. The proportion of citizens in the United States who complain of hunger reflects the global average. Fully 18% of Americans indicated they had insufficient food in the past year, placing the United States squarely in league with countries such as Guatemala, Croatia and Panama.
Americans, those who read these statistics should cringe. I know that as a Canadian, understanding that poverty strides the streets of our cities and countrysides, I am made a lesser human being by that fact.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, April 17, 2006
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