Get the Facts

DID YOU KNOW?

More than 1 billion people — one in six — live on less than $1 a day, and almost 3 billion live on less than $2 a day.
Source: World Bank. PovertyNet

In the developing world, more than 800 million people go to bed hungry each night.
Source: FAO Newsroom — The numbers: SOFI 2004 hunger statistics

One in five people on the planet lacks access to clean, safe drinking water.
Source: UN-Water, The 2nd UN World Water Development Report: “Water, a shared responsibility.” March 2006

Educating girls and women—who are the majority of farmers in the developing world—leads to more productive farming and accounted for almost half the decline in malnutrition between 1970 and 1995.
Source: Center for Global Development, Rich World, Poor World — A Guide to Global Development Education and the Developing World

Almost 11 million children die each year, mainly from preventable causes.
Source: UNICEF. Progress for Children: A Report Card on Immunization [No. 3], 2005

In the past two decades immunization has prevented an estimated 20 million deaths from vaccine-preventable infections.
Source: UNICEF and WHO, Immunization Summary 2006

Of 876 million illiterate adults in the developing world, two-thirds are women.
Source: UNDG, the Millennium Project

Educated mothers are 50 percent more likely to immunize their children than are mothers with no education.
Source: Center for Global Development, Rich World, Poor World — A Guide to Global Development Education and the Developing World

Women are responsible for half the world’s food production, but not even two percent of land is owned by women.
Source: FAO. Focus: Women and Food Security

Every year of schooling increases individual wages by a worldwide average of about 10 percent.
Source: UNICEF at a Glance, 2004

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