13+-+statistics+on+poverty

There are many things that can affect the balance between wealth and poverty. Some you know about, so i am not going to patronise you by sitting here and listing them. Instead here are some statistics that, some of you might not know. All of these facts/statistics are relevent to poverty and the fact that it does exist in the world. It is every were. Down every street, and in every country No one is a mune to poverty. Unless the government does something, then how do they expect to reduce poverty by 2020.
 * 1) Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.
 * 2) The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined.
 * 3) Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
 * 4) Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen.
 * 5) 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.
 * 6) The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation.
 * 7) The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money.

all of these facts were taken from http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp