Population, Poverty and Development

Many of the world’s social and economic problems can be directly attributed to population growth. Issues such as poverty, hunger, child mortality, insufficient health care and diminishing natural resources are a result of too many people competing for limited or misdirected resources.

By the year 2015, the world’s population is estimated to exceed 7 billion. Despite the world’s best efforts, more than 600 million of those people will still be trapped in poverty. Yet poverty is much more than mere economics; poverty denies people the choices and opportunities they need to improve their lives.

In 1990, an estimated 28 percent of the developing world’s people, more than 1.2 billion people, were living in extreme poverty, many with an income of less than $1 a day. By 2002, that percentage had dropped to an impressive 19 percent. The greatest change was seen in Eastern Asia, South-Eastern Asia and Oceania, while the greatest challenge for easing poverty remains in Latin America, the Caribbean, and especially Sub-Saharan Africa, where the rise in the population of people living in extreme poverty has negated the small decline in the poverty rate.

Despite the positive aspects of change in poverty rates, the number of people who go hungry has been slow to decline. In 1990, 20 percent of the people in the developing world did not have sufficient food to meet their daily needs. In 2003, an estimated 17 percent, or 824 million people, were affected by chronic hunger.

PCI-Media Impact programming was initially established to help less developed countries focus on the problem of overpopulation and the effect it has on hunger, poverty and the environment. In light of subsequent research into the root causes of poverty and a better understanding of global population trends, PCI-Media Impact has refocused our programs to promote access to reproductive health services, expanded educational and economic opportunities and maternal and child health.

Worldwide, families are having half as many children today as they did in the 1960s, but fertility remains high in the poorest countries. Some 350 million couples still do not have access to a range of effective and affordable family planning services, and the demand for these services is expected to increase by 40 percent in the next 15 years.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

Back to top