Hunger and poverty

Back to Global Youth Policy - WPAY

Learn what governments commited to in 1995: The World Programme of Action for Youth on Hunger and Poverty (A/RES/50/81)
C. Hunger and poverty

40. Over one billion people in the world today live in unacceptable conditions of poverty, mostly in developing countries, particularly in rural areas of low-income countries in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and the least developed countries. Poverty has various manifestations; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environments; and social discrimination and exclusion; it is also characterized by a lack of participation in decision-making and in civil and socio-cultural life. Poverty is inseparably linked to lack of access to or loss of control over resources, including land, skills, knowledge, capital and social connections. Without those resources, people have limited access to institutions, markets, employment and public services. Young people are particularly affected by this situation. Therefore, specific measures are needed to address the juvenilization and feminization of poverty.

41. Hunger and malnutrition remain among the most serious and intractable threats to humanity, often preventing youth and children from taking part in society. Hunger is the result of many factors: mismanagement of food production and distribution; poor accessibility; maldistribution of financial resources; unwise exploitation of natural resources; unsustainable patterns of consumption; environmental pollution; natural and human-made disasters; conflicts between traditional and contemporary production systems; irrational population growth; and armed conflicts.

Proposals for action

1. Making farming more rewarding and life in agricultural areas more attractive

42. Governments should enhance educational and cultural services and other incentives in rural areas to make them more attractive to young people. Experimental farming programmes directed towards young people should be initiated and extension services expanded to maintain improvements in agricultural production and marketing.

43. Local and national Governments, in cooperation with youth organizations, should organize cultural events that enhance exchanges between urban and rural youth. Youth organizations should be encouraged and assisted in organizing conventions and meetings in rural areas, with special efforts to enlist the cooperation of rural populations, including rural youth.

2. Skill-training for income-generation by young people

44. Governments, in cooperation with youth organizations, should develop training programmes for youth which improve methods of agricultural production and marketing. Training should be based on rural economic needs and the need to train young people in rural areas in techniques of food production and the achievement of food security. Attention should be given in such programmes to young women, youth retention in rural areas, youth returning to rural areas from the cities, young people with disabilities, refugee and migrant youth, displaced persons and street children, indigenous youth, youth returning from military service and youth living in areas of resolved conflicts.

3. Land grants for young people

45. Governments should provide grants of land to youth and youth organizations, supported by financial and technical assistance and training. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization are invited to document and disseminate information about national experience with land-grant and settlement schemes for use by Governments.

46. Governments, consistent with their rural development schemes and with the assistance of international organizations, as appropriate, are encouraged to work with volunteer youth organizations on projects which enhance and maintain the rural and urban environments.

4. Cooperation between urban and rural youth in food production and distribution

47. Non-governmental organizations should organize direct-marketing groups, including production and distribution cooperatives, to improve current marketing systems and to ensure that young farmers have access to them. The aim of such groups should be to reduce food shortages and losses from defective systems of food storage and transport to markets.

World Youth Report 2005

1. Poverty 11. It is estimated that currently almost 209 million young people, or 18 per cent of all youth, live on less than $1 a day, and 515 million young people, or nearly 45 per cent, live on less than $2 a day. South Asia has the largest number of youth living below these two poverty lines, followed by sub-Saharan Africa. Using a different indicator, these regions are also home to the largest concentrations of undernourished young people.3

Table 1
Estimates of the numbers of youth, age 15-24, living in poverty in 2005, in millions
Region Less than $1/day Less than $2/dayUndernourished
South Asia 84.1 206.1 57.8
Sub-Saharan Africa 60.7 102.1 39.9
East Asia and the Pacific 46.5 150.5 38.6
Latin America and the Caribbean 11.1 27.2 10.8
Middle East and North Africa 2.0 12.1 7.1
Europe and Central Asia 4.1 18.2 5.8
World* 208.6 515.1 160.1
Source: R. Curtain, Youth in Extreme Poverty: Dimensions and Policy Implications with Particular Focus on South-East Asia (Melbourne, 2004); see also footnote 3.
* The total does not exactly reflect the total of the regions due to rounding.

12. Since age groups overlap and children become youths, there is value in studying child poverty indicators as well. It has been argued that it is insufficient to base estimates of childhood poverty only on household income, expenditure or consumption profiles. Moreover, it is generally agreed that poverty is also characterized by limited access to public services, such as a safe water supply, roads, health care and education. Thus, based on a set of indicators of severe deprivation of basic human needs, an alternative measure of child poverty has been derived.4 Although designed to measure poverty among children up to age 18, it serves as an indicative measurement for poverty among youth as well.

13. Using this set of indicators, it is estimated that over one third of all children in developing countries are living in absolute poverty, with the highest rates of 65 per cent, or 207 million children, in sub-Saharan Africa, and 59 per cent, or 330 million children, in South Asia. Rates are lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean and East Asia and the Pacific, with 17 and 7 per cent, respectively. Rural children face significantly higher levels of poverty than urban children, with rates for absolute poverty of 70 per cent or higher in both rural sub-Saharan Africa and rural South Asia. Severe deprivation of shelter and sanitation are the problems affecting the highest proportion of children in the developing world, mainly in rural areas.5

14. Most poverty in developing countries is concentrated in rural areas, especially among small farmers and landless families. Much urban poverty in its turn is the consequence of rural deprivation and economic decline, which creates distress migration to the cities. The World Programme of Action for Youth put a strong emphasis on rural development. Actions focused on making farming more rewarding and life in agricultural areas more attractive. Poverty reduction efforts need to have an explicit agricultural growth strategy in place. However, over the past 10 years, there has been a sharp decline in the resources, both national and international, devoted to agricultural and rural development in developing countries.6

15. There is increased recognition that investing in youth can be beneficial to poverty alleviation efforts. Youth are increasingly consulted in drafting poverty reduction strategy papers, and they are also increasingly identified as a major group affected by poverty. Of the 31 poverty reduction strategy papers completed between May 2002 and September 2003, 17 give major attention to youth in their action plans. The focus in these plans is mostly on education and employment. Despite this positive trend, only six poverty reduction strategy papers have specifically identified youth as a group in poverty, and only 16 per cent of the strategy papers view young people as a focus for integrated interventions.

16. While these developments are positive, most poverty alleviation efforts still do not fully integrate concerns related to youth poverty into national growth strategies that include infrastructure development and agricultural policy changes targeted at the poor. Youth should be mainstreamed into poverty reduction strategies, emphasizing the importance of poverty reduction among youth to the socioeconomic development of the country. Young people should be consulted in the process of policy development. Such an integrated approach should include all priority issues identified in the World Programme of Action for Youth as being relevant to the national situation.

17. Rural youth should be at the forefront of interventions aimed at reducing poverty and stemming the current large-scale migration of young people to urban areas. Commitments made in the World Programme of Action for Youth in this regard should be implemented and supported by agriculture credit schemes for young people. Specific educational curricula focusing on the needs of rural youth can enhance their skills. However, such developments cannot fully succeed without structural agricultural transformation on a global level, including access to markets and sharing of new technologies.

18. There is a need for more quantitative and qualitative research on poverty alleviation among youth. Making a thorough analysis of the specific characteristics of youth poverty remains difficult due to the lack of agedisaggregated data, and most poverty research does not specifically focus on young people. There is a strong need for prior acknowledgement of the needs of youth and for research on and consultation with youth as prerequisites for their inclusion in national poverty strategies. Suggested topics of research include the collection of longitudinal data on youth in poverty, the role of youth in the intergenerational transmission of poverty, the characteristics of the transition from school to work, the collection of longitudinal information on the labour market experiences of youth, the extent and nature of the involvement of young people in the informal sector and in underemployment, and the potential for Governments to facilitate youth employment.

Footnotes:

1. See World Population Prospects, 2002 Revision (United Nations publication, Sales No. 03.XIII.7).
2. See E/CN.5/2003/4.
3. The two income poverty lines are calculated from the data contained in World Development Indicators 2004 on the proportion of people in each country below the international poverty line (United Nations population estimates). Estimates of the numbers of young people are based on figures on nutrition in UNDP, Human Development Report 2004, table 7, and United Nations population estimates. See Curtain, R., “Youth in extreme poverty: dimensions and policy implications with particular focus on South-East Asia”, paper prepared as input for the World Youth Report 2005, available at www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/workshops/main.htm.
4. See D. Gordon, S. Nandy, C. Pantazis, S. Pemberton and P. Townsend, Child Poverty in the Developing World (Bristol, The Policy Press, 2003).
5. Ibid. Severe deprivation is defined as "those circumstances that are highly likely to have serious adverse consequences for the health, well-being and development of children. Severe deprivations are causally related to 'poor' developmental outcomes both long and short term". Indicators are developed for severe deprivation regarding the absence of food, water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education, information and access to basic services. A child is living in absolute poverty only if he or she suffers from two or more severe deprivations of basic human needs.
6. See FAO, IFAD, WFP, Reducing Poverty and Hunger: the Critical Role of Financing for Food, Agriculture and Rural Development (Rome, 2002); N. Majid, Reaching Millennium Goals: How Well Does Agricultural Productivity Growth Reduce Poverty? (Geneva, ILO, 2004).