Singapore has a population of almost 6 million people with a $297.9 billion GDP which is growing at the average rate of 3.9 percent every year. Singapore is one of the richest Asian countries per capita. In 2012, Singapore city was ranked as the sixth most expensive city to live in the world—after cities including Tokyo, Sydney and Oslo. Despite these statistics, one-tenth of Singapore’s population is currently living in poverty.
Today, the income inequalities have become more noticeable than ever. Unlike large countries such as China or India where there is a distinct difference between urban towns and rural villages, Singapore is a small island where both the wealthy and poor live in proximity to each other.
Out of 136 countries considered, Singapore currently ranks the 26th most income disparate. This makes them the second most income unequal country in Asia. According to the Singapore government, over 105,000 families live in poverty. This translates to about one in 10 family homes, or 378,000 people.
While Singapore has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world and has an average per capita income of over $52,000, there are 105,000 families left with $5 to spend per day and 114,000 individual residents making less than $805 per month.
Furthermore, the purchasing power of the poor has significantly dropped. It has been determined that the top 10 percent wager-earning households earn as much as 25 times more than the bottom 10 percent. While the top earners saw their real wages increase, those on the bottom saw their real wages decrease. It is further distressing to realize that the price of goods and services rose by 13.1 percent since 2012.
Poverty in Singapore Today
Singapore had never had an official poverty line to measure the rates of poverty in their country. However, the Singaporean Parliament chose to establish a rough definition after neighboring Hong Kong created guidelines to better identify and take strides towards relieving the financial stress those particular citizens.
Currently, while Singapore has no acceptable measure of poverty, they consider any four person household that makes less than $1,250 per month as somewhat struggling. The $1,250 figure is considered the average a four person household would typically spend on food, clothing and shelter per month.
Much of the country’s poverty is created by the influx of foreign workers taking blue collar jobs that were once held by native Singaporeans. Foreign workers unfortunately mean cheaper labor. There is always a cost to globalization, and this time it has affected Singaporeans in their own home.
Despite the large, wealthy buildings in Singapore, many are often struggling to find affordable housing. Those that cannot make it live in tiny government-owned apartments that are barely bigger than 13 square feet. In those cases, rent is paid to the government according to how much they can afford to pay, children from impoverished backgrounds attend school on fees subsidized by the government and food is provided not by the wages earned but by charitable donations.
While Singapore does not have abject poverty like one would find in various parts of Africa, being unable to afford living in your country is an issue that any government should address and find solutions.
– Christina Cho
Sources: BBC, Singaporeans Against Poverty, Al Jazeera, World Bank
Photo: SMU
Poverty in Singapore
Singapore has a population of almost 6 million people with a $297.9 billion GDP which is growing at the average rate of 3.9 percent every year. Singapore is one of the richest Asian countries per capita. In 2012, Singapore city was ranked as the sixth most expensive city to live in the world—after cities including Tokyo, Sydney and Oslo. Despite these statistics, one-tenth of Singapore’s population is currently living in poverty.
Today, the income inequalities have become more noticeable than ever. Unlike large countries such as China or India where there is a distinct difference between urban towns and rural villages, Singapore is a small island where both the wealthy and poor live in proximity to each other.
Out of 136 countries considered, Singapore currently ranks the 26th most income disparate. This makes them the second most income unequal country in Asia. According to the Singapore government, over 105,000 families live in poverty. This translates to about one in 10 family homes, or 378,000 people.
While Singapore has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world and has an average per capita income of over $52,000, there are 105,000 families left with $5 to spend per day and 114,000 individual residents making less than $805 per month.
Furthermore, the purchasing power of the poor has significantly dropped. It has been determined that the top 10 percent wager-earning households earn as much as 25 times more than the bottom 10 percent. While the top earners saw their real wages increase, those on the bottom saw their real wages decrease. It is further distressing to realize that the price of goods and services rose by 13.1 percent since 2012.
Poverty in Singapore Today
Singapore had never had an official poverty line to measure the rates of poverty in their country. However, the Singaporean Parliament chose to establish a rough definition after neighboring Hong Kong created guidelines to better identify and take strides towards relieving the financial stress those particular citizens.
Currently, while Singapore has no acceptable measure of poverty, they consider any four person household that makes less than $1,250 per month as somewhat struggling. The $1,250 figure is considered the average a four person household would typically spend on food, clothing and shelter per month.
Much of the country’s poverty is created by the influx of foreign workers taking blue collar jobs that were once held by native Singaporeans. Foreign workers unfortunately mean cheaper labor. There is always a cost to globalization, and this time it has affected Singaporeans in their own home.
Despite the large, wealthy buildings in Singapore, many are often struggling to find affordable housing. Those that cannot make it live in tiny government-owned apartments that are barely bigger than 13 square feet. In those cases, rent is paid to the government according to how much they can afford to pay, children from impoverished backgrounds attend school on fees subsidized by the government and food is provided not by the wages earned but by charitable donations.
While Singapore does not have abject poverty like one would find in various parts of Africa, being unable to afford living in your country is an issue that any government should address and find solutions.
– Christina Cho
Sources: BBC, Singaporeans Against Poverty, Al Jazeera, World Bank
Photo: SMU
What Causes Hunger in Africa
What causes hunger in Africa? To be certain, Africa is by no means a single entity. The second largest continent on Earth, Africa is an enormous landmass that is home to a wide variety of landscapes, cultures and people.
That said, the continent is also home to much of the world’s hunger, spread across several of the world’s poorest countries. Approximately 30 million people in Africa face the effects of severe food insecurity, including malnutrition, starvation and poverty.
Ending hunger not just in Africa but wherever it occurs is crucial to solving impoverishment and, accordingly, is a leading priority for many humanitarian organizations.
Causes of Hunger in Africa
1. Lack of Infrastructure
Many of the African countries in which there is widespread hunger are countries in which there is also plenty of food. Agriculture is the leading economic industry in several of the hungriest African nations including Niger, Ethiopia and Somalia.
The issue is not that there is a lack of food, the issue is that there are are often no reliable pathways for getting that food from the fields into that hands of the people who need it the most. Many hungry countries lack accessible rural roads on which food could be transported into the countryside.
Where it does not already exist, building the infrastructure necessary for distributing food is essential to ending hunger in Africa.
2. Poverty
Poverty is a cause of hunger in Africa as well as an effect. Nearly a third of individuals living in sub-Saharan Africa are “undernourished,” and 41 percent of people in that same area live on less than U.S. $1 daily. That’s no coincidence; high rates of poverty are correlated with high rates of hunger because acquiring adequate food provisions requires ample resources, not only financial but social as practical as well.
3. Gender Inequality
According to one of the most successful hunger-focused humanitarian organizations, The Hunger Project, gender inequality is a major driving force behind hunger because food tends to go further in the hands of women. When women have adequate food supplies, they as well as their families experience better health and social outcomes than when men have sole control of food rations.
However, in many African nations experiencing hunger crises, though women do the majority of agricultural work, they do not control their own access to food. Addressing gender inequality where it occurs in Africa will be central to eradicating hunger.
4. AIDS
AIDS is especially prevalent in southern Africa (Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe), where approximately six million people are estimated to live with the condition. Not only does AIDS render these individuals too sick to do any sort of agricultural work (which, if farming is their livelihood, can throw them into poverty), it can also render them to sick to leave their homes to acquire food for themselves and their families.
– Elise L. Riley
Sources: Save the Children, The Hunger Project, World Food Programme
Photo: Ceasefire Magazine
New Hope in the Fight Against Dengue
After decades of searching, scientists may have finally found a vaccine for dengue, one of the developing world’s most feared infectious diseases.
Researchers released a new report confirming the efficacy of the vaccine after the conclusion of a study lasting four years and involving over 20,000 school-aged children in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Honduras. The study has proven the new drug to be overwhelmingly effective, and both scientists and doctors around the world are celebrating this monumental achievement. The efficacy of the vaccine against severe dengue was 95.5 percent.
Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection that affects nearly 400 million people annually. It is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in many Latin American and Asian countries, and has been spreading violently throughout the developing world since the late 1950s.
The absence of a dependable treatment for the disease has made dengue a particularly terrifying illness in the global south. The debilitating muscle and joint pains associated with cases of severe dengue have earned the disease its nickname, ‘break-bone fever’. Infected individuals can also suffer crippling headaches, nausea, vomiting and a painful rash across the back and chest. Nearly 500,000 people, most of them children, die from the disease each year.
Initial news of the drug’s potential broke in late 2011, when French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur announced plans to release the new antiviral medication by mid-2015. Since that time, research teams have been working tirelessly in many countries spanning both Asia and Latin America, where the disease is most prevalent. Meticulously testing patients, administering vaccinations and recording their findings, scientists have emerged from the study with new certainty in the drug’s effectiveness.
Relaying the good news on Jan. 8, Sanofi Pasteur reported the overall efficacy of the drug to be 60.8 percent for children between the ages of nine and 16 who received three doses of the vaccine over a 12-month period. Furthermore, the study confirmed 80.3 percent reduction in the risk of hospitalization for dengue-infected individuals. The crowning achievement of the study, however, was the accomplishment of a 95.5 percent protection rate against the most deadly form of the disease, a discovery that is projected to save countless lives in countries from India to Brazil.
Past efforts to control dengue have relied heavily on preventative practices such as destroying mosquito egg-laying habitats and spraying insecticides intended to kill the disease-carrying mosquito vector. Without an effective antiviral medication available to treat infected individuals, however, the fight against dengue has been violent—and often deadly—for economically disadvantaged communities in tropical areas of the world. Because of the mosquito’s ability to adapt to many diverse environments, and its skill for finding hidden deposits of stagnant water in both rural and urban areas, regions affected by dengue quickly find the disease to reach epidemic proportions amongst their populations.
The introduction of the new dengue vaccine serves as a beacon of hope in the world’s fight against deadly pathogens, and will prove to empower millions of people in the developing world in their own fight against poverty.
– Brady Thomas Mott
Sources: New England Journal of Medicine, WHO
Photo: Top News
Education in Equatorial Guinea Lacking
Millennium Challenge Corps Helps Philippines
The Millennium Challenge Corps, or MCC, recently announced that the Philippines is eligible to receive another five-year extension on funding. The MCC is funded by the U.S. Congress and is meant to be an incentive for countries who actively reform policies to improve government functions.
This new five-year plan is intended to continue funding poverty alleviation projects within the Philippines. Washington recently announced the Philippines’ eligibility to continue the program.
“The selection of the Philippines for a second compact is a recognition of President Aquino’s commitment to good governance. I believe a smooth transition to a second compact will help the Philippines in further institutionalizing good governance policies and reforms,” said Ambassador Jose Cuisia, Jr.
The compact will aid the country in further deterrence of corruption. The Philippines’ government has operated under these regulations and is looking forward to reaping the benefits of continued funding.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation was founded in January 2004 by U.S. Congress. The MCC is an independent agency is committed to intelligently funding U.S. aid to countries in need of support. A part of its mission focuses on country-lead solutions that enable the countries to prioritize the areas of concern they find to be the most pertinent.
In addition, the chosen countries set up local MCC headquarters in order to monitor progress and work closely with the people and programs they are implementing. The MCC works in the world’s most severely impoverished countries in order to strengthen infrastructure to help lift people out of poverty.
The MCC operates on three main principles that are prerequisites for countries to be considered as eligible to receive funds: good governance, economic freedom and investments in their citizens. Although these requirements are loosely worded and give room to numerous interpretations, the MCC goes through a strict identification process to identify candidates for the long-term funds.
This will be the Philippines second compact. The first compact, awarded in 2010, comprised of $214.4 million to repair infrastructure and roads and another $120 million for poverty alleviation projects and community affairs.
In addition to the Philippines, Nepal and Mongolia were also selected by the Board of Directors to be eligible for funding and investment.
For the MCC to continue funding a country the country must show gradual improvement. One of methods of measurement the board uses to evaluate is per capita income level. The countries who receive compacts from the MCC have to show an increase from a Low Income Category to Low Middle Income Category.
Overall, the MCC was founded on principles that support international development through direct funding to areas the countries they decide to be the most pertinent to overcoming poverty. The MCC allows the countries to choose how they believe their country should best spend the money it has been given.
– Maxine Gordon
Sources: Yahoo News, MCC
Photo: Wall Street Journal
SID: Promoting Policy Dialogue
At the forefront of shaping the theory and practice of development, the Society for International Development (SID) challenges existing practices and suggests alternative approaches to three notable themes— environment, women in development and the concept of human development.
SID is a global network of individuals and institutions that are concerned with development, believing it is participative, pluralistic and sustainable.
Founded in Washington D.C. in 1957 and based in Rome since 1978, SID is a policy-oriented organization that focuses on advocacy and service-delivery actions but plays a unique role that sets their society apart from the rest. What differentiates SID from other development organizations is that the organization builds on multi-disciplinary dialogues, future-minded thinking and scenarios-based and holistic policy planning. Three core actions truly distinguish SID from any other organization: knowledge building through research, facilitating dialogue and catalyzing policy change.
According to the SID website, “since its inception in 1957, SID has always acted as a unique global space for honest dialogue and effective interconnected nature among diverse actors at community, national and international level.” The Society’s broadly-stated vision and mission has remained unchanged and generally, SID’s activities will aim to, “contribute to building consensus for the need for a new convivencia (or coexistence) by supporting initiatives that generate new visions for society, leadership and political will; Encourage and facilitate dialogue between diversities through knowledge based activities; [and] facilitate knowledge generation, sharing and dissemination.”
SID’s website further states that the organization is “recognized as a pertinent, innovative and future oriented institution that fosters learning, innovation and constructive dialogue; one that nudges institutional boundaries and enlarges the spaces for exchange and exploration in the search for social justice and development that is just, equitable and sustainable.”
Today, SID has more than 3,000 members in 80 countries and more than 45 chapters worldwide. SID works with more than 100 local and international associations, networks and institutions involving parliamentarians, academics, students, political leaders and development experts. This society has a holistic, multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach to development.
– Eastin Shipman
Sources: Society for International Development 1, Society for International Development 2, Society for International Development 3, Society for International Development 4, Society for International Development 5 SIDW
Photo: Facebook
Education in Myanmar
Paying Out-of-pocket for Healthcare Contributes to Poverty
The UN recently announced that paying out-of-pocket for healthcare leads to “deep impoverishment” in many nations. It is estimated that 80 percent of people throughout 44 countries do not have healthcare due to the high cost.
“It is the poorest with the highest needs who suffer the most from having to pay out-of-pocket healthcare expenses,” says ILO Health Policy Coordinator, Xenia Scheil-Adlung.
According to the World Health Organization, over 100 million people fall into poverty every year due to medical expenses. An additional 150 million are required to contribute almost half of their incomes on medical bills. The majority of these countries lack social healthcare programs, affordable insurance options or government-funded healthcare.
Remarkably, a great deal of those living in impoverished areas devote relatively more money to health services than people living in wealthy, developed countries. For instance, in Germany where almost every citizen has social healthcare, residents pay only 10 percent of national medical expenses.
On the other hand, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo very few residents have access to healthcare and they pay approximately 70 percent of national medical care costs. Similarly, in Seirra Leone, citizens pay over 75 percent of total healthcare expenses out-of-pocket. This has resulted in deep impoverishment in Seirra Leone and other similar nations.
“At least 1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to the most basic healthcare,” said Dr. Rüdiger Krech, Head of Social Protection in the Division Health, Education and Social Protection at GTZ. “Often it is because they cannot afford it. As a result, millions become very sick or die every year from preventable or curable medical conditions. For example, the toll from treatable infections and preventable complications of pregnancy and delivery is more than 10 million deaths each year,” Krech added.
Since 2010, national economic consolidation policies have delayed and adversely affected efforts toward universal healthcare. Recent policies have cut back health services and reduced wages for healthcare workers, augmenting the financial hardship on private households.
Officials state that universal healthcare access is a key element in the global initiative to end poverty. Director-General of the International Labor Organization, Guy Ryder, emphasizes that universal healthcare diminishes inequality and promotes economic growth.
“Social health protection is not only a key tool to make health care accessible to all and to free millions of people from poverty. It is also an investment in health, productivity and development—an investment that is a prerequisite for international competitiveness,” said Assane Diop, Executive Director of the ILO.
Experts agree that investments in healthcare systems create economic growth for all parties involved as well as raises in productivity and wellbeing for residents. Many urge that in order to overcome the global health crisis, policies for universal healthcare must be initiated.
– Meagan Douches
Sources: United Natons, World Bank, World Health Organization
Photo: Empower Magazine
Child Poverty Rate Increases in the US
Increasing economic inequality between middle and upper economic classes has grown since the ’90s. Children living in urban centers remain the most affected by poverty and low income.
Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health released a statement based on a study showing that poverty increased dramatically after the recession in 2007. The report states, “Years after the end of the Great Recession, child poverty remains widespread in America’s largest cities. Nearly three children in five living in Detroit are poor, according to the most recent Census figures, a rate that has grown by 10 percentage points since the onset of the Great Recession in 2007. Most children in Cleveland and Buffalo also live in poverty, as do nearly half the children in Fresno, Cincinnati and Memphis.”
The way the U.S. defines poverty is different from the way many other countries define the issue. Most other countries measure poverty after a person has received the social service benefits. However, the U.S. Census measures a person who is below the poverty line before they receive government funded social services that could technically keep them out of poverty.
Children in poverty then, are measured without the benefits that have otherwise kept them out of poverty. Contributing writer, Tim Worstall, of Forbes Magazine writes, “It’s the number of children who would be in poverty if there wasn’t this system of government alleviation of poverty. When we do actually take into account what is done to alleviate child poverty we find that it’s really some two to three percent of U.S. children who live in poverty. Yes, that low: the U.S. welfare state is very much child orientated.”
The Center for American Progress Fund reported that over 45 million Americans are living in poverty. For a family of four this would mean making a combined income of $23,834 or less in a year. Poverty is concentrated disproportionally in the South. Mississippi, for example, is currently at the top of the list with an overwhelming 24.1 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
Some aspects that affect the structural reasons for poverty consist of low economic mobility, federal minimum wage and little to no healthcare coverage. Because children born into poverty start out with a smaller pool of resources to draw from, the cyclic nature of poverty continues generation after generation. Minimum wage is another factor in the conversation as states such as Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina adhere to federal minimum wage of $7.25.
Healthcare is nearly impossible for families living below the poverty line to afford especially if they have jobs that do not provide benefits.
The concentrated collective poverty of certain demographics is reinforced by state and local governments. Concentrated collective poverty refers to a relatively affluent country that has destitute segments of the population living in long-term poverty. Although the rate of child poverty in the U.S. is skewed, there are still large demographics underserved with a lack of resources.
– Maxine Gordon
Sources: Forbes, Salon, Britannica
Photo: Century Times
Education in Kazakhstan