Usually there are reasons to celebrate when a country strikes oil. Nevertheless, many countries will end up substantially worse than if they wouldn’t have found anything. According to Michael Ross[1], oil-rich countries such as Gabon and Iraq, experienced an income decline of 45 and 85 percent respectively, from 1980 to 2006. Moreover, oil-rich
It’s no surprise that there is a direct correlation between a country’s economy and its poverty rate. Higher economic growth in a country correlates to lower poverty rates. This is because higher economic growth creates enough jobs to help citizens stay above the poverty line. Research done on a variety of
Increasingly, the old family homestead is not being passed down to the family when the parents die.
Older parents are taking advantage of reverse mortgages to pay off credit cards and to escape poverty and debt. This reduces equity in the home and often leads to foreclosure, leaving traditional heirs with nothing but memories.
Not only are
In discussions of poverty in the US, child poverty tends to get most of the focus.
And I think there are good reasons for that. While the US has more poverty than other rich countries in general, it is a particular outlier on child poverty. In 2016, the US poverty rate for children (defined as
Despite recent progress, Maine continues to struggle with too many children who are growing up in poverty, unsure where their next meal will come from.
But an innovative collaboration between the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, Maine Community Foundation, the Maine Community Action Association and Maine Equal Justice Partners has
Drug companies as tax dodgers, price gougers, and influence peddlers
New Oxfam research shows that four pharmaceutical corporations—Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & CO (MSD), and Pfizer—systematically stash their profits in overseas tax havens. They appear to deprive developing countries of more than $100 million every year—money that is urgently needed to meet the health needs
Imagine what life would be like without access to modern-day energy sources, like electricity. This is energy poverty. For millions of poor people across the globe, their livelihoods, well-being and health are affected by the harmful energy options they are left with.
Here are five facts you should know about energy poverty.
Poverty, unemployment and inequality are perhaps the biggest challenges facing society today. These issues all urgently need solutions, and businesses bear a responsibility in helping to create them. One of the key ways in which businesses can do this is through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes.
Investing in CSR programmes can bring business as well as
The Director General of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Mr Suleiman Al-Herbish, has reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to helping in the eradication of energy poverty across the globe.
Around one in seven people or 1.1 billion people don’t have access to electricity and almost three billion people still cook with polluting fuels such as
While poverty has long been linked with poor health, a study from UC San Francisco has found that simply living in a more desirable neighborhood may act as a health booster for low-income children.
UCSF researchers compared levels of the stress hormone cortisol in 338 kindergartners whose families’ annual incomes ranged from less than $10,000 to
For years, Americans have been told we’re in the middle of a recovery, that economic growth and jobs are on their way back. But by many measures, the recovery has been uneven, varying between industries, cities, and neighborhoods. In nearly four of five urban areas in the U.S., household income was at least
Economic inequality is one of the most pressing matters in Los Angeles, with people debating what to do about a rise in homelessness and a shortage of affordable housing. This week, a local group unveiled plans to address the situation, though specifics steps remain sparse.
On the morning of Tuesday, Jan. 30, the Los Angeles County
Several years ago, a senior person at a large foundation (let’s call him Fred) asked us if we thought financial inclusion—creating and supporting financial products and services designed for low-income communities—really made a difference to the poor. We took his question very seriously, and answered that we honestly weren’t sure whether it was as high
On a cool May morning in eastern Rwanda, in the early days of harvest season, an American businesswoman named Gayatri Datar is driving out to meet some of her customers, almost all of whom are farmers of the poorest sort.
Datar and a few passengers bounce along a rutted road in a truck tattooed
“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT that helps people among the U.S.’s 43 million recipients of the electronic benefit transfer (EBT) service to stretch their food-stamp benefits as far as possible.
If you find yourself having to purge your refrigerator’s crisper bin every few weeks, imagine what goes on at a grocery store. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimates that annually between a third and a half of all food produced is wasted worldwide. According to the Guardian, approximately 45% of all fruits and
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley which kindly granted permission for use.
By Jill Suttie
Some years ago, filmmaker Daniel Karslake, director of the acclaimed documentary, For The Bible Tells Me So, learned that every three seconds someone around the
Every morning and afternoon, Douglas Adjei receives a phone call giving the weather forecasts at his farm in southern Ghana.
It’s thanks to an app called Farmerline, which gives smallholder farmers daily voice-based information in their local language, providing access to critical information on prices, the use of insecticides, and weather information to help with
Among the spending choices for governments of poorer nations, kick-starting the technological revolution may at first seem like a low priority. Compared with critical infrastructure, healthcare, or schools, improved digital access and less waiting times for birth certificates feel like luxuries that should come further down the road, or perhaps be left to
Nairobi, Kenya — Poverty is a blight, and one that disproportionately affects sub-Saharan Africa. It is a vast and complex issue whose tentacles reach into many areas, including climate change, sustainable development and-crucially-global security. The link between poverty and violent extremism is compelling, and means that if we want to address extremism, we
