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Dear Hunger Notes,
My name is N.B. and I am a sixth grader at Brookside Intermediate School. I am conducting research on poverty, and I have a question I hope you can answer. Do you the most recent statistics for the world's poverty rate broken down by country? I would greatly appreciate any information you can provide.
Thank you for your consideration, N.B.

Dear N.B.,

I think the best place to start would be the World Bank's poverty page http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/home/. The World Bank is the acknowledged institution for providing poverty estimates. The main information provided on that page is $1.25 a day poverty for all countries (that have the information) but it is not in tabular form. Also see the two links provided on that page, the poverty and equity databank, and the data dashboards. These are somewhat harder to use but do end up with useful information. I didn't find a nice, handy table with the information by country. I hope this is helpful--good luck!

Editor, Hunger Notes

Dear Hunger Notes, I am a junior at Highland Park Senior High in St.Paul MN, USA. I have a few questions to be answered if it's no problem:
1. Why is there such a thing as World Hunger?
2. Is there not enough food to go around?
3. What is one way to solve this issue?
4. What countries have the highest rate of hunger?
5. Is poverty sort of a combination with Hunger?
Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,  F.B.T.

Dear F.B.T.,
Here are my answers to your questions:

2. Is there not enough food to go around? There is enough food to go around. See our the section on "Is there enough food to feed everyone" in our World Hunger Facts http://worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm .

5. Is poverty sort of a combination with Hunger? Poverty is the main cause of hunger. See the section "Causes of poverty" in our World Hunger Facts.

1. Why is there such a thing as World Hunger? See the section "Causes of poverty" in our World Hunger Facts. I would say also that people do not care enough to address the problem fully in their own nations--this for various reasons such as pursuit of their own self-interest, and because many governments  are ill-suited to address a major problem such as hunger.

3. What is one way to solve this issue? I think that at bottom the issue will be solved when very poor people have jobs that lift them out of poverty and thus hunger. China has done a very good job of lifting many of its people out of hunger and you might look more closely at what China has done.

4.What countries have the highest rate of hunger? Look at the latest FAO edition of The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011. It can be downloaded at http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/i2330e/i2330e.pdf  At the end (p. 48) , there is a technical annex which gives the proportion of undernourished in the total population and you can see which countries have the highest rate of hunger.

Thanks very much for asking these useful questions.
Editor, Hunger Notes

 

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