Poverty
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Children under age 18 make up nearly 48% of the population of the world’s least developed countries, compared with 21% of the population of the world’s industrialized.
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More than 730 million people lack access to electricity and modern forms of energy as of 2024.
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Over 1.4 billion people in the developing world live below the poverty line (U.S. $1.25 per day).
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Every day 1,500 women die from complications in pregnancy or childbirth that could have been prevented. Each day 10,000 newborns die within a month of birth, and daily the same number of babies are also born dead.
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More than 9 million children under age 5 die each year. Two-thirds of these deaths - more than 6 million every year - are preventable.
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Sources: www.unicef.org, www.undp.org, www.worldbank.org, www.who.int, www.freeworldacademy.com, www.un.org, www.timesofindia.com
Health Challenges
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Malaria kills approximately 1 million children per year, many of them under age 5 and most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Malaria, together with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, is one of the major public health challenges undermining development in the poorest countries in the world.
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Children under age 5 account for less than 10% of the world’s population, but suffer from 40% of the diseases attributed to environmental factors.
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Acute respiratory infections annually kill an estimated 2 million children under the age of 5.
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About 1.8 million people, most of whom are children, die annually of food-borne diseases.
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Sources: www.unicef.org, www.un.org, www.malarianomore.com, www.who.int, www.ncseonline.org
Education
• Nearly 115 million children are out of school. Globally, some 53% of the children out of primary school are girls, meaning that for every 100 boys out of school, 115 girls are in the same situation.
• Only 14.4% of GDP per capita is spent on primary education.
• About 75% of children out of primary school in developing countries have mothers who did not go to school.
Sources: www.unicef.org, www.nationmaster.com, www.worldbank.org
Hunger
• One person in seven battles hunger every day.
• Approximately 963 million people across the world are hungry.
• More than 9 million children under age 5 die every year, and malnutrition accounts for more than one-third of these deaths. Most of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
• About 5.6 million deaths of children worldwide are related to under-nutrition. This accounts for 53% of the total deaths for children under 5.
• More than 140 million or 25% of all children in developing countries are underweight and at risk from the long-term effects of malnourishment.
• Nearly 15% of babies in developing countries are born with a low birth weight compared with only 7% of babies in industrialized countries.
Sources: www.unicef.org, www.who.int, www.wfp.org, www.un.org