Extreme Poverty: Human Impact

One billion people live on less than a dollar a day; the human impacts of such extreme poverty are enormous.  For some perspective, consider that the average Christ follower in America lives on a bit more than $100 per day.  To live on just one percent of that amount — $1.00 – would be quite a challenge, to say the least.  Where would you live?  What would you eat?  How would you take care of your family?  Try to picture the unimaginable choices you would be forced to make!  Imagine having to deciding which one of your children gets to eat today… Imagine doing this day after day, week after week, year after year… what would your prospects, your children’s prospects, for the future look like?

For the billion people who, through no fault of their own, have to live with the reality of extreme poverty, the consequences are harsh:

• • 9,000,000 die each year from hunger-related causes; another child dies every 5 seconds
  • 5,000,000 die each year from water-related illness; another child dies every 15 seconds
  • millions more die each year from malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, and a host of other preventable diseases.
  • each year, millions of children are orphaned, their futures put at even higher risk, due to the above
  • millions of children grow up mentally impaired, handicapped due to malnutrition and unsafe water
  • 200 million man-hours of work are spent every day in the developing world just hauling water, mostly by women and children – which has the profound effect of severely limiting their opportunities for education and income production.

Hunger, thirst, hardship, disease, and death all combine to make income-producing work, education, and community improvement all but impossible for those living in extreme poverty.  This is what it means to be “trapped” in extreme poverty.

And here’s a thought to consider:  when one is truly trapped, the only way to be set free is through some sort of  intervention from “outside”… so again, we have the question:

What does God expect of us?

The figures in this post were taken from The Hole in Our Gospel, by Richard Stearns, President, World Vision US.  This book was named Christian Book of the Year for 2010 by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.
Highly Recommended…