Around half of the world lives in poverty so extreme that they can barely survive, and around 25,000 people die from hunger each day whilst a new billionaire is created every second day. The call for a global safety net has never been so urgent - and compels the international community to transform economic priorities and guarantee the universal securing of basic human needs.
In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of
Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation's adjusted
gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929,
according to Internal Revenue Service data. Reported by Jesse Drucker.
The UN will convene a High-level Event on the MDGs in New York on 25 September 2008. At the halfway point towards the target date - and with hunger on the rise - new questions are being asked about their effectiveness.
The World Bank's latest poverty figures underline
the fact that globalisation has been largely ineffective at either reducing the
burgeoning ranks of the world's poor, or including this vast swathe of the
global population into the mainstream economy, writes Adam W. Parsons.
A new system should
be created that is totally focused on social relief and justice, not
pandering to the calls of the profit-driven private sector capitalist
market that permeates the present world, says Dr David Hill.
The World Bank has warned that world poverty is much greater than previously thought. It has revised its previous estimate and now says that 1.4 billion people live in poverty, based on a new poverty line of $1.25 per day, reports Steve Schifferes.
Crime is down, convictions are down, but the prisons are bursting. So what is the link between all the statistics? The answer is inequality, argues George Monbiot.