- Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
- The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
- Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
- 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.
- 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day) and this are just some facts about one of our century biggest problem.
We know them, we see them all around us – poor, abused, homeless people. So why do we still keep romanticizing poverty? It is easier for us do deal with it if we wrap it in a nice package ?
It is known that the human brain has the tendency and sometimes the ability to “erase” bad experiences or to try to paint them pink. Basically it is a survival thing, it`s one of the brain reactions, the “auto-pilot meant to help us to get over any bad thing that happened to us, save us not to collapse.
So our brain is doing everything possible to help us. Did you know that one of the poverty effects is the “brain shrinking”?
It has been demonstrated that long term stress damage the brain. So basically they don`t even have their brain help in order to fight poverty. So who`s helping them?!
They need us! Romanticizing poverty makes people thing it doesn`t need to change.
This infographic from Social Work Degree Center shows us real and interesting facts about poverty and the way we tend to romanticizing it.