Here follow some facts from United Nations Development Report/UNICEF 1997 and WHO 1998 selected by Manufacturing Dissent.
$40 BILLION A YEAR
$ 40 billion a year is estimated to be the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health carefor all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all, and clean water and safe sewers for all is roughly $40 billion a year–or less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world.
SOME STATISTICS
-1.3 billion people in the world today (1,300 million, or 1,300,000,000people) struggle to survive on $1/day.
-3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on $2/day.
-2 billion have no access to power (electrical).
-The net worth of 10 billionaires, ten human beings, is greater than the combined national income of the forty-eight poorest countries combined.
-Globally, one in five people do not expect to live beyond the age of 40.
-Three out of four in the poorest countries will not live to 50th birthday
-About 300 million people live in 16 countries where life expectancy actually decreased between 1975 and 1995.
1997 DEATHS
Out of of a global total of 52.2 million deaths, 17.3 million were due to infectious and parasitic diseases; 15.3 million were due to circulatory diseases; 6.2 million were due to cancer; 2.9 million were due to respiratory diseases and 3.6 million were due to perinatal conditions. The leading causes of deaths from infectious diseases were acute lower respiratory infections (3.7 million), tuberculosis (2.9 million), HIV/AIDS (2.3 million) and malaria (1.5-2.7 million).
THE CAPITALIST HOLOCAUST
-More than 15 million adults aged 20 to 64 are dying every year. WHO: “Most of these deaths are premature and preventable.”
-The gap between the poorest fifth of the world’s people and the richest fifth has increased from 30:1 in 1906 to 78:1 in 1994.
-The world’s 225 richest individuals, of whom 60 are Americans with total assets of $311 billion, have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion–equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the entire world’s population.
-Debt relief for the 20 largest 3rd world “debtor nations” would cost $5.5 to 7.7 billion, the cost of a couple of stealth bombers.
-The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries.
-Microsoft Corporation makes $34 million (20 million) profit a day. This is what sub-Saharan Africa pays each day in debt service (interest and capital repayments).
-The cost of meeting basic goals in Africa for health, nutrition, education and family planning would be about $9 billion a year.
-In 1996, sub-Saharan Africa paid the developed world $13.4 billion, including $9.5 billion in new loans and $2.6 billion of its aid (23% of all grants). So nearly a quarter of aid to Africa simply goes to repay debts.
-Developing countries paid $270 billion in debt service last year – $60 per person. This has risen from $160 billion in 1990.
-The assets controlled by the 200 wealthiest individuals are greater than the Gross Domestic Product of the entire continent of Africa, home to 600 million people.
-Americans spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics–$2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide basic education for everyone in the world.
-Europeans spend $11 billion a year on ice cream–$2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide clean water and safe sewers for the world’s population.
-Sweden and the United States have 681 and 626 telephone lines per 1,000 people, respectively. Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have one line per 1,000 people.
-40 percent of the Russian population now lives in poverty.
-Mr. Knight, the CEO of Nike corporation has $5.2 billion net worth. To reach that amount of money, a young Chinese woman in their factory would have to work for 9 hours per day, for six days a week, for one-hundred centuries.
-The 16 billion Britain is spending on 232 new Eurofighters would cancel the entire debt of south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
-Nike paid Michael Jordan $20,000,000 per year to promote Nike sneakers, which is greater than the annual income of 30,000 asian women together who sew Nike sneakers.
USA STATISTICS
-Between 20 and 30 million Americans suffer from hunger (Congressional Hunger Center, 1995).
-The U.S. has the highest infant mortality, AIDS, road accident, pesticide consumption, homicide, reported rapes, imprisonment and hazardous waste production rates among Switzerland, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Austria, France, Finland and Canada (The World Bank, World Development Report, 1994 and UN, Human Development Report, 1994).
-The United States is the richest country on the planet yet it has the greatest income disparity…. Sixty percent of all U.S. jobs created since 1979 pay less than $7,000 a year” (Fian Fact Sheet, Welfare by Corporations is Corporate Welfare). http://www.foodfirst.org
-The US, with just 5 times the population of Italy, has 150 times more children in detention” (UNICEF)
SHARE of global income going to richest 20% and poorest 20% of world’spopulation:
| Year | Richest 20% share | Poorest 20% share | Rich to poor ratio |
| 1960 | 70.2% | 2.3% | 30:1 |
| 1970 | 73.9% | 2.3% | 32:1 |
| 1980 | 76.3% | 1.7% | 45:1 |
| 1989 | 82.7% | 1.4% | 59:1 |
During the period 1979 through the present, the growth in income has disproportionately flowed to the top. The bottom 60% of the population actually saw their real income decrease in 1990 dollars. The next 20% saw modest gains. The top twenty percent saw their income increase 18%. The wealthiest one percent saw their incomes explode over 80%
UK STATISTICS
Since 1979 the income of the richest 10 percent has continuously risen while that of the poorest 10 percent has steadily fallen. In 1992-93, 25 percent of Britons — some 14.1 million people — were living in poverty, a majority of them women.
According to the London-based Child Poverty Action Group approximately 59 percent of people living in poverty are women. Women make up to 70 percent of the lowest earners and four out of five women employees work part-time.
Source
© Manufacturing Dissent 1999
