Did You Know A Billion Live On Less Than $1.50 A Day?

Aug 23 2007 (TODAY)

NEW YORK - How many people in the world live on less than US$1 ($1.50) a
day? When United States workers in an online survey answered that
question, 23 per cent correctly said a billion people or more.

Millennium Promise, founded by economist Jeffrey D Sachs to help ease
extreme poverty in African villages, conducted the survey among nearly
7,000 employees in the US between Feb 15 and March 6.

Sixty per cent of respondents named Africa as the continent most in need
of corporate philanthropy, twice the number who picked North America.

Seventy-two per cent said they would want their employers to help those
who live in extreme poverty if the firm has "the resources to help". But
27 per cent said their companies should not devote resources to fighting
poverty around the globe.

The most common argument cited by 52 per cent of those dissenters was that
US firms should focus their philanthropy on alleviating problems in
America.

Mr Sachs' group has a goal of ending extreme poverty worldwide by 2025,
while the United Nations Millennium Development project seeks to cut in
half the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, a common
measure of extreme poverty, by 2015.

Some progress is being made. On April 15, the World Bank estimated that
the ranks of those in extreme poverty fell to 985 million in 2004, the
last year for which information is available. - Bloomberg