Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Target 1: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day
Progress
- 25% of people live below the poverty line compared with 42% in 1990
- The proportion of people living below the poverty line has fallen from 42% in 1990 to 25% in 2005
- Based on this trend, the developing world as a whole is on track to meet MDG target 1
- Regionally East Asia and the Pacific has made most progress since 1990, reducing the proportion of people living below the poverty line from 55% in 1990 to 17% in 2005
- South Asia has made some progress falling to 40% in 2005, from 52% in 1990 but will need to increase the rate of its poverty reduction if it is to remain on track as a region
- Sub-Saharan Africa remains off-track falling only from 58% in 1990 to 51% in 2005. On this trend, it will not meet the 2015 target.
Key messages
- Strongest poverty reduction occurs in the presence of sustained economic growth
- As well as growth itself, countries need to ensure that the poor gain from economic progress and are protected in difficult times to make greater gains in poverty reduction
- The current global financial crisis has already resulted in reduced forecasted annual growth rates for Sub-Saharan Africa in 2009 from 7%, made in December 2007 to 4.5%, made in December 20084. This is likely to have a significant impact on the progress made in reducing poverty.
- Countries have suffered from rising food and fuel prices earlier in 2008 which has had a negative impact on progress in reducing poverty
Facts and figures
- The number of poor people has fallen by 400 million from 1.8 billion people in 1990 to 1.4 billion people in 2005
- If the target is going to be met by 2015, it will be a result of the exceptional progress made in East Asia and the Pacific
- Since 1990, the number of people living in poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa has increased by almost 100 million people to 388 million in 2005 while the proportion of people living in poverty has fallen slightly.
- Future prospects remain strongly dependent on growth rates which are highly uncertain even if developing countries are still expected to grow faster than industrialized countries
Challenges and Solutions
Countries need sustained economic growth if they are to lift a significant number of people out of poverty. The countries that have seen the greatest progress in income poverty reduction have been those with the strongest growth rates.
However, as Asia has demonstrated, per capita growth needs to be 3-4% per annum to have a major impact on poverty numbers. Some studies have shown that growth can account for a large proportion of poverty reduction – one in particular shows growth as accounting for more than 80% of poverty reduction with less than 20% due to changes in income distribution.
Current global economic conditions on the back of food and fuel price rises have changed the outlook for growth:
Policies to stimulate investment and strengthening international economic links may prove fruitless due to conditions beyond the control of developing country governments. Investment levels will fall off as the financial crisis deepens.
Difficult domestic conditions in industrialised countries will make progress in gaining access to international markets for developing countries more difficult. Moreover, many developing countries’ current accounts have been hit hard by high oil prices earlier in 2008. This limits their ability to provide public services, protect the poor and enact policies and programmes to stimulate investment. This makes it all the more important that donors maintain their ODA pledges and support developing countries during the crisis.
These conditions increase the importance for countries to lay the foundation for future economic growth by strengthening the environment for investment and job creation. This will include improving the business enabling environment through transparent regulation and taxation, enforcement of property rights and maintaining peace and stability. It will also include protecting the poor and ensuring that they have access to hospitals and schools and to make sure that they can feed their families in this uncertain time.
What the UK government is doing to help
DFID is committed to helping partner countries develop sustainable growth strategies. It is because of this that DFID has committed £37 million over the next three years to the International Growth Centre. The IGC will provide developing countries support to develop their own growth strategies that focus on the needs and constraints of a particular country.
DFID will continue to improve its understanding of the links between growth, inequality and poverty reduction with support from the IGC and in partnership with the World Bank, the IMF and the rest of the international community. DFID recently co-financed the Growth Commission Report which provides a valuable insight into the growth experience since the Second World War.
The UK remains on course to meet the ODA target of 0.7% of GNI by 2013.
Sources
a) All data for target two can be found in Millennium Development Goals Report 2008
- All data in this section can be found in The Global Economic Prospects 2009, the World Bank, December 2008
- This is based on the new poverty line of $1.25 which was introduced in August 2008 by the World Bank following a in-depth revision of purchasing power parity data. More information can be found at “Dollar a Day Revisited” by Ravallion, Chen & Sangraula, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4620, May 2008.
- Global Economic Prospects 2008, World Bank, December 2007
- Global Economic Prospects 2009, World Bank, December 2008
- Using numbers from The Developing World is Poorer than we thought but no less successful in the fight against poverty.” S. Chen and M. Ravallion, World Bank 2008
- Dollar and Kraay, 2001, "Growth is Good for the Poor", Policy and Research Working Paper, The World Bank. Kraay, A. (2006), “When is Growth Pro-Poor? Evidence from a Panel of Countries”, Journal of Economics 80, 198-227.
- Millennium Development Goals at Midpoint: Where do we stand?”, Bourguignion et al, 2008
- DFID Annual Report 2008, page 16.
- IMF Commodity Price data
Target 2: To halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015.
Progress
Higher food prices have triggered an increase in hunger worldwide making the task of reaching the target more difficult.
In September 2008 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) announced that high global food prices have pushed 75 million more people into hunger.
The number of people suffering from hunger is now 923 million. However, there has been a reduction in hunger due to a decrease in countries in Eastern and South East Asia. These regions, along with Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to meet the target.
In sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia and Western Asia, the absolute number of undernourished has increased, but the percentage of undernourished has decreased.
Key messages
923 million people are now suffering from hunger, an increase of 75 million from one year ago (FAO The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008). High food, fuel and fertilizer prices are contributing to this increase. Food prices rose 52% between 2007 and 2008, and fertilizer prices nearly doubled.
The hardest-hit have been the poorest, landless and female-headed households. Food price rises are being driven partly by supply disruptions and a cyclone in Bangladesh. But most food prices are driven by rising demand due to:
- changing diets
- economic growth
- an expanding world population
- urbanization
- use of fuel crops for biofuel
- export bans by some countries to protect local markets
- panic buying by governments to build strategic grain reserves
- inappropriate agricultural policies, including subsidies in developed countries.
The world grows enough food to feed its population. To eradicate hunger, ordinary people in the developing world need to be able to access food either by growing it or through purchase.
Poverty is the primary cause of hunger and poverty reduction is the principle means of tackling it. But climate, poor farm productivity, weak governance and armed conflict are also contributing factors. Drought and other natural disasters often increase the number of people facing acute hunger. They have to sell their livestock, tools or land. This helps them survive in the short term but makes it harder to get out of the poverty trap in the longer term.
Hunger reduces the ability of the poor to work and make a living. Hunger compromises efforts to reduce child mortality, improve educational attainment and enable people to invest in building a future for themselves. Government policies and actions are critical for creating an environment in which people can obtain enough food. These include:
- encouraging efficient markets and trade
- enhancing productivity, especially farm productivity, and economic growth
- tackling risk and vulnerability
- putting in place measures to assist the poor directly.
Facts and figures
Rising food prices hit the poorest hardest. In the UK, families spend as much as 15% of their weekly budget on food. For the urban poor in developing countries this figure is even more – around 60% of the weekly budget (2). For the poorest in rural areas this has risen to 80% due to the rise in food prices (2). This means the poor are more vulnerable to price shocks.
Global food prices have eased due to good harvests, but problems will remain. Food production needs to increase by 50% by 2030 to meet additional demand from a bigger population and predicted dietary changes (FAO).
Malnutrition is a contributing factor in over half of under-five deaths in developing countries (3).
More than 20 million low birth-weight babies are born in the developing world every year - about one quarter of all children. In some countries, including India and Bangladesh, over 30 percent of all children born are underweight. Low birth-weight babies are more likely to die in infancy and to be condemned to stunted physical and cognitive growth during childhood. Ultimately they suffer from reduced working capacity and earnings as adults (4p8).
Every year that hunger continues at present levels costs more than five million children their lives and costs developing countries billions of dollars in lost productivity and earnings (4p4).
In sub-Saharan Africa the number of undernourished people rose by over 34 million between 1990-92 and 2000-2002 – a figure equivalent to more than half the population of the United Kingdom (1p4).
Developed countries spent $US 279 billion to support their own agriculture in 2004 (5p2). By comparison, in the same year, total net Official Development Assistance to the developing world from donor countries amounted to $US 79 billion (6).
Challenges and Solutions
The Comprehensive Framework for Action sets out two priorities. One is to meet the immediate needs of the vulnerable populations by improving access to food and nutrition support and increasing food availability. This includes humanitarian actions as well as actions to boost smallholder farmer-led food production, trade and tax measures. Another set of immediate actions aims at building longer-term resilience and global food and nutrition security by:
- expanding social protection systems
- sustaining growth of smallholder farmer food production
- improving international food marketsdeveloping an international consensus on biofuels.
In addition, a third set of actions aims at establishing better global information and monitoring systems.
Poverty and Hunger
The main obstacle to reducing hunger is poverty. Poor people cannot get enough food by either growing or buying it – particularly in times of economic downturn and high food, fuel and fertilizer prices. Introducing measures to reduce poverty will help to reduce hunger.
In the past there has been too much focus on treating the symptoms of hunger, e.g. through providing food aid, rather than dealing with the underlying causes. Instead of focusing on the production of food, the emphasis also needs to be on its accessibility and affordability.
In the words of M.S Swaminathan, the father of the Indian Green Revolution: "In many developing countries, including India, chronic hunger is related to a famine of work and purchasing power and not to a famine of food in the market".
Whilst the link between poverty and hunger is strong, poverty levels do not explain all malnutrition. For example, in South Asia where poverty levels are decreasing, child malnutrition persists (7p6). Tackling hunger means addressing the structural reasons that lock people into a poverty cycle.
Hunger hinders economic growth for poor people. The causes of hunger and poverty are bound up with access to resources, markets, knowledge and political voice. Efforts to reduce hunger and poverty need to take this into account. Decreasing the vulnerability of the poorest to debilitating levels of hunger reduces the long-term damage that malnutrition causes. It can also help poor people become agents of development who can contribute to economic growth.
Agriculture and the Environment
Agricultural growth is critical for hunger reduction. Some 70% of the poor in developing countries live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, either directly or indirectly. Combating hunger requires an expanded commitment to agriculture and rural development both to generate income and keep food at affordable prices (8p28). Raising farm productivity is the key.
Forests and other natural habitats are increasingly being cleared to grow food. Poor management of the environment risks future food production as land becomes eroded or exhausted. Strategies for reducing hunger must therefore be based on long-term environmental sustainability.
A challenge to world food production and prices is biofuels. Investment in biofuels-related agriculture and processing is increasing rapidly due to recent high oil prices and policies on climate change.
Biofuels production accounts for around 1% of the world’s arable land but this will rise to a projected 12-15% per annum by 2015. This includes expansion in poor countries. In the future, there will need to be a balance between food for people and food for energy.
What the UK government is doing to help
For current and planned activities: just over £1 billion is programmed to boost agriculture and reduce hunger in rural areas, approximately £250 million per year. This includes investments in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, livestock, rural roads and food aid. For example:
- £20 million worth of better roads and new and better markets for poor farmers in Mozambique
- £10 million to improve the livelihoods of 75,000 poor tribal households in Orissa, India
- Long-term social protection can improve food security, nutrition and self sufficiency. DFID supports social protection programmes in 20 countries. In Africa alone we spend £55 million a year, covering 10 million people.
- In Bangladesh we have spent over £50 million on the Chars Livelihoods Programme to support people through asset transfers to the extreme poor. This includes provision of livestock, seeds, cash transfers, and land leases, with appropriate training and capacity building.
- In Zimbabwe social transfers and other support to agriculture are included in the £36 million Protracted Relief and Recovery Programme and the £23 million orphans and vulnerable children programme.
To address high food prices: the UK has announced an additional £868 million for both short and long term actions. This includes:
- This year, DFID has contributed £75 million to the World Food Programme for emergency and protracted relief operations, more than double last year’s response (£35 million).
- Drought and food shortages in the Horn of Africa are worsening with 17 million people in need of emergency assistance. UK has announced an increased contribution to this region of £42 million.
- A further £22 million to the Ethiopian Productive Safety Nets Programme to cover extra food costs and to increase the wage rate for the public works programme.
- A further £70 million over 6 years for social protection in Bangladesh.
- Doubling support for Agricultural Research to £400 million over the next five years. Areas of spending will include:
o £200m to international agricultural research organisations
o £75m to regional research organisations
o £25m to Responsive Programmes with the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
- This year, DFID has given £330 million of budget support to eight countries in Africa and South Asia. Further budget support is likely to be made this financial year
Sources
- Unless otherwise indicated the source of all data is UN Statistics Division report on progress to MDG 1 (1990 -2005).
- Ensuring the UK’s Food Security in a Changing World – Discussion Paper, July 2008, DEFRA and Hausse des prix des denrées alimentaires au Sahel : l’urgence d’une action à long terme, Oxfam International et Save the Children, Page 2, Novembre 2008 (available in English)
- Connect-World: Global Themes
- UN Food & Agriculture Organisation: The State of Food Insecurity in the world 2004 – Monitoring progress Towards the World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Goals
- United Nations: The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006
- ECD – Agricultural Policies in OECD Countries – Monitoring and Evaluation 2005
- OECD - Statistical Database
- UN Millennium Project Publications
- UN Food & Agriculture Organisation: The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006 – Eradicating world hunger – taking stock 10 years after the World Food Summit
- IMF Commodity Price data