Tag: Statistics

Posted on

The World We’ve Made: Every 5 Seconds A Child Dies From Malnutrition And Hunger

The World We’ve Made: Every 5 Seconds A Child Dies From Malnutrition And Hunger

Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.”

– Norman Borlaug, agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate.

In a previous post, Agriculture In The 21st Century, the amount of food produced in the world that is wasted (1/3 of food produced) was brought up. In that post, a number of experts were quoted, stating that malnutrition and hunger could be ended if unused food were properly distributed.

Malnutrition and Hunger

The following statistics from the World Food Programme show the severity of the lack of food distribution in the world, chiefly highlighting its affect on the children of the world:

Every five seconds a child dies because of hunger.

  • 854 million people worldwide do not have enough to eat, more than the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Hunger is the world’s no.1 health risk. It kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

  • One in seven people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight.

Asia and the Pacific region is home to over half the world’s population and nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people.

  • 65 percent  of the world’s hungry live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

Undernutrition contributes to five million deaths of children under five each year in developing countries.

  • One out of four children – roughly 146 million – in developing countries is underweight.

More than 70 percent of the world’s underweight children (aged five or less) live in just 10 countries, with more than 50 per cent located in South Asia alone.

  • 10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths.

Iron deficiency is the most prevalent form of malnutrition worldwide, affecting an estimated 2 billion people. Eradicating iron deficiency can improve national productivity levels by as much as 20 percent.

  • Iodine deficiency is the greatest single cause of mental retardation and brain damage, affecting 1.9 billion people worldwide. It can easily be prevented by adding iodine to salt.”

The Need For Empathy

In famine, a focus on women and children highlights biology: here is a mother who cannot feed her child, a breakdown in the natural order of life. This focus obscures who and what is to blame for the famine, politically and economically, and can lead to the belief that a biological response, more food, will solve the problem.”

– Sherman Apt Russell, Nature and science writer

The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

– Charles Trevelyan, British civil servant and colonial administrator

What Do You Think?

In the post before this one, Redefining Prosperity, the issue of prosperity was raised in relation to economics and growth. The same question can easily be posed here as well:

What is the responsibility of those who live in the world in relation to malnutrition and famine?” 

What do you think? Write your answer in the comment section below…

Image: Zoriah_kenya_famine_kakuma_refugee_camp_irc_international_rescue_committee_aid_hunger_starvation_shortage_20090128_9672 by Zoriah.

Posted on

Global Youth Unemployment On The Rise

Global Youth Unemployment On The Rise

The current, unprecedented level of global youth unemployment has raised the risk of creating ‘a lost generation’… [Y]oung people account for 40 percent or more of all unemployed people in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia, and nearly 60 percent in Syria and Egypt.”

  • Nemat Shafik, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

The world is facing a worsening youth employment crisis: young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults…”

The United Nations estimates that last year 74.8 million youth between the ages of 15 to 24 faced joblessness, with 6.4 million young people dropping out of the labor market in 2011 alone. The highest youth unemployment rates are in North Africa (27.1%) and the Middle East (26.2%)…

In the ostensibly prosperous Euro-area countries, over one-in-five young people (21.3%) cannot find a job. When this regionally-averaged figure is broken down to remove countries like Germany, the results are stark: In Spain and Greece, nearly half of all youth are without a job (48.7% and 47.2% …”

The Consequences Of Youth Unemployment

  • Lower life expectancy: Unemployment more generally has been linked to lower life expectancy, a higher incidence of heart attacks later in life, and even higher rates of suicide.
  • Higher crime rates: Increased unemployment has been linked to higher crime rates.
  • Increased costs to the economy: Youth unemployment results in higher unemployment insurance and other benefit payments, lost income tax revenues, and wasted productive capacity.
  • Lower lifetime earnings: Youth unemployment leaves a “wage scar” in the form of lower earnings that can last into middle age. The longer the period of unemployment, the bigger the effect.”
The following video gives a brief overview of the youth unemployment crisis:

Is More Economic Growth The Answer?

Albert Einstein once said, 

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”

Unfortunately, the current trend of solutions being proposed to tackle continued youth unemployment, and unemployment in general, has tended to steer towards further economic growth as the answer to the problem.

What do you think?

Is further economic growth the answer? Or is it from the level of thinking which has helped to create the global youth unemployment crisis?

Image: chitral photos 91, 95, 98, 102, 99 by groundreporter.

Posted on

Agriculture In The 21st Century: The Need For Global Partnership To Address Poor Food Distribution, Waste, Malnutrition And Famine Worldwide

Agriculture In The 21st Century: The Need For Global Partnership To Address Poor Food Distribution, Waste, Malnutrition And Famine Worldwide

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase.”

– World Hunger Education Service.

Rising food prices are at a dangerous level, and global cooperation is needed to tackle the increasingly challenging issue.”

– Robert B. Zoellick,  World Bank Group President [source: “World Bank chief urges global cooperation to tackle food security challenge“]

The food scarcity part of the argument in the population debate is an interesting one—people are hungry because they cannot afford food, not because the population is growing so fast that food is becoming scarce.

The global food system is spectacularly bad at tackling hunger or at holding itself to account.”

–  Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies

Throwing Food Away

30% of all food produced in the world each year is wasted or lost. That’s about 1.3 billion tons… That’s as if each person in China, the world’s most populous country with more than 1.3 billion people, had a one ton mass of food they could just throw into the trashcan.”

Distributing Food Poorly

The amount of grain produced in the world today could provide each person on the planet with the equivalent of two loaves of bread per day…The problem lies in the distribution of the world’s food.

The majority of food is produced in economically more developed countries such as USA, but those countries that are really in need of their share of the food to solve their hunger problems, cannot afford the high prices that these farmers charge and can get from other richer countries.”

Hunger, Malnutrition & Famine

Hunger is a term which has three meanings (Oxford English Dictionary 1971)

  • the uneasy or painful sensation caused by want of food; craving appetite. Also the exhausted condition caused by want of food
  • the want or scarcity of food in a country
  • a strong desire or craving”

Malnutrition is a general term that indicates a lack of some or all nutritional elements necessary for human health.”

  1. “Malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.”
  2. “One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished.”
  3. “Every year 15 million children die of hunger.”

What Is Food Security?

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle.

To be food secure means that:

  • Food is available – The amount and quality of food available globally, nationally and locally can be affected temporarily or for long periods by many factors including climate, disasters, war, civil unrest, population size and growth, agricultural practices, environment, social status and trade.
  • Food is affordable – When there is a shortage of food prices increase and while richer people will likely still be able to feed themselves, poorer people may have difficulty obtaining sufficient safe and nutritious food without assistance.
  • Food is utilised – At the household level, sufficient and varied food needs to be prepared safely so that people can grow and develop normally, meet their energy needs and avoid disease.”

A Lack Of Global Partnership

At the turn of the millennium, the global community set itself an ambitious target: to halve the number of hungry people in the world by 2015. It is not going to happen.

At present, the total quantity of food that is produced globally is good enough to meet the daily needs of 11.5 billion people. If every individual were to get his daily food requirement as per the WHO norms, there would be abundant food supplies.”

Posted on

Study Shows Equality Benefits Everyone, Rich And Poor

“The rich developed societies have reached a turning point in human history. Politics should now be about the quality of social relations and how we can develop harmonious and sustainable societies.” 

The Equality Trust, based on the work of Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, reached this summary after analyzing data showing that societies with greater inequality between rich and poor are far more unhealthy than societies with a more equal income distribution.

More Unequal = More Problems

The study shows that:

  • More unequal societies have more problems with general health, mental illness, infant mortality, drug use, obesity, imprisonment rates, teenage pregnancies and homicides.
  • More equal societies have better education and general health, more innovation, higher social mobility and more trust.

The slides and their titles (some listed below) show in more detail how societies with bigger gaps between rich and poor are generally more unhealthy societies than more equal societies:

  • Health and social problems are worse in more unequal countries
  • Health and social problems are not related to income in rich countries
  • Health and social problems are worse in unequal US states
  • Health and social problems are only weakly related to average income in US states
  • Child well-being is better in more equal rich countries
  • Child well-being is unrelated to average incomes in rich countries
  • Levels of trust are higher in more equal rich countries
  • Levels of trust are higher in more equal US states
  • The prevalence of mental illness is higher in more unequal rich countries
  • Drug use is more common in more unequal countries
  • Life expectancy is longer in more equal rich countries
  • Infant mortality rates are higher in more unequal countries
  • More adults are obese in more unequal rich countries
  • Educational scores are higher in more equal rich countries
  • More children drop out of high school in more unequal US states
  • Teenage birth rates are higher in more unequal rich countries
  • Teen pregnancy rates are higher in more unequal US states
  • Homicide rates are higher in more unequal rich countries
  • Homicide rates are higher in more unequal US states
  • Children experience more conflict in more unequal societies
  • Rates of imprisonment are higher in more unequal countries
  • Rates of imprisonment are higher in more unequal US states
  • Social mobility is higher in more equal rich countries
  • Overdeveloped countries? High life expectancy can be achieved with low carbon dioxide emissions
  • More equal countries rank better on recycling

 

Unequal Societies = People Being More Self Interested, Less Public Spirited, Less Concerned With The Common Good

“Because inequality increases status competition, it also increases consumerism. People in more unequal societies work longer hours because money seems even more important.

Because inequality harms the quality of social relations (increasing violence, reducing trust, cohesion and involvement in community life), people become more self-interested, less public spirited, less concerned with the common good.”

Taken from the presentation to The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, p. 34

 

Equal Societies Benefit Everyone, Rich & Poor

“Almost everyone benefits from greater equality.

Usually the benefits are greatest among the poor but extend to the majority of the population.”

Taken from the presentation to The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, p. 23

 

Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett: Why Greater Equality Makes Stronger Societies

Talk discussing the above data and arguments in more detail recorded January 8, 2010 at Hogness Auditorium, University of Washington, Seattle.

 

Richard Wilkinson: How Economic Inequality Harms Societies [TED Talk]

Professor Richard Wilkinson discussing the above study with an emphasis on the UK, one of the countries ranking high in inequality.

Further Reading:

Image: People at the Museum by ancawonka on Flickr

 

Posted on

New Twitter Study Shows Global Happiness On The Decline

In case you didn’t know, or have yet to receive a tweet about it, twitter is now being used for research. For instance at Cornell University a study was conducted which looked through over 500 million tweets to gauge users moods throughout the day: It turns out that we start our days positively (positive tweets), then our moods begin to decline throughout the day (at around midnight they pick back up again).

A more recent study at the University of Vermont has also been conducted in which, “… more then 46 billion words written in Twitter tweets by 63 million Twitters users around the globe…” were analyzed.

From this the researchers immersed themselves in a new perspective,

In these billions of words is not a view of any individual’s state of mind. Instead, like billions of moving atoms add up to the overall temperature of a room, billions of words used to express what people are feeling resolve into a view of the relative mood of large groups.”

Like in the Cornell study,

The Vermont team then took these scores and applied them to the huge pool of words they collected from Twitter. Because these tweets each have a date and time, and, sometimes, other demographic information—like location—they show changing patterns of word use that provides insights in the way groups of people are feeling.”

The implications of such research?

The new approach lets the researchers measure happiness at different scales of time and geography… and stretched out over the last three years, these patterns of word use show a drop in average happiness.”

So, the Cornell study measured mood shifts of Twitter users throughout the day and now the Vermont study shows that happiness has been declining amongst Twitter users over the past 3 years.

The researchers stress that it isn’t only “… younger people… with smartphones,” either because, “Twitter is nearly universal now… Every demographic is represented.”

One added benefit:

“… measuring happiness has been exceedingly difficult by traditional means, like self reporting in social science surveys. Some of the problems with this approach are that people often don’t tell the truth in surveys and the sample sizes are small.”

The Vermont study does not show a specific reason for why happiness is globally declining but does pose the question, 

Why does happiness seem to be declining?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w

Quotes and graph image taken from the University of Vermont. For more information about the study: http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=news&storyID=12986&category=uvmhome

For more information on the Cornell Study:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6051/1878.abstract

Sad Twitter Bird image courtesy of Full Stop.