411: Poverty

Author: 411, Save the Children UK & Campaign 2000

ONE in FIVE people around the world survives on less than $1 USD per day.

Being poor is not just about having no money. It can mean not having enough to eat or a roof over your head, being in poor health, and having little or no education. It can mean feeling powerless to change your life, and not being able to control what happens to you.

EFFECTS ON CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE
Children and young people are particularly affected by and vulnerable to poverty. This is partly because they have less power to fight it, have less knowledge of or access to the means to overcome it, or they are on the receiving end of family poverty. Being born underweight, given little or bad quality food and little or no education can prevent children from developing properly. Poverty can also force them to work instead of going to school, or make them suffer because of their parents? depression or alcoholism, brought on by poverty and despair.

FACTS

• About 600 million children in the world live on less than US$1 a day
• At least 250 million children under 15 have to work
• More than 130 million children of primary school age-60 per cent of them girls-don't get a basic education
• Five million severely malnourished children die every year.

CAUSES OF POVERTY
The underlying reasons for poverty can include war or armed conflict, natural disasters, population growth, debt, poor government planning, limited job opportunities, as well as inequalities linked to race, gender, age or disability. Poverty is at the root of most problems facing children today-even those that seem to have nothing to do with it, like HIV/AIDS, violence, or disability. When parents fall ill with HIV/AIDS, children often have to quit school to support the family and care for their parents because their governments can?t afford to provide proper health care. Their poverty gets worse if they become orphans. Every day, 8,500 children are themselves infected with HIV.

CHILD POVERTY IN CANADA
Poverty isn't just found in southern, or developing countries. Many people are poor in the Canada and other northern, industrialized countries too. Relatively speaking, this poverty may not be as harsh. But it is similar because it denies people opportunities to develop their abilities, blocks their access to essential resources like education and healthcare, and ultimately excludes them from society. Poverty shuts people out.

"IT COULD NEVER HAPPEN TO ME, OR COULD IT?"In Canada today:

• ONE out of every SIX children are poor.
• More than ONE MILLION children live in poverty
• ONE in THREE of all children in Canada have been exposed to poverty
• 5 million Canadians live below the poverty line - 1.4 million are children

Fifteen years ago the Canadian Government decided to eliminate poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000." However in 2004 more than one million children, or nearly one child in six, still live in poverty in Canada. Not only is Canada's record on child poverty actually worse than it was in 1989, Canada's rate of poverty jumped for the first time in 2002, following five straight years of decline.