Intended for healthcare professionals

Student Education

Poverty and health

BMJ 2001; 322 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0106180 (Published 01 June 2001) Cite this as: BMJ 2001;322:0106180
  1. Mike Rowson1
  1. 1Medact, London

Mike Rowson gives the facts and figures about poverty and health and suggests what health professionals should be doing about it

Poverty is the number one killer in the world today, outranking smoking as the leading cause of death.1 This is hardly surprising given the number of people in the world who survive on meagre incomes, often in appalling conditions. This article briefly surveys several areas, including definitions of poverty and the numbers of people who are poor; the causes of poverty; the links from poverty to ill health; and what can be done to tackle poverty both inside and outside the health sector.

How many people are poor?

Income poverty lines

Poverty is often defined in terms of a person's income or the amount of goods they are able to consume. For example, the World Bank has set the international poverty line at an expenditure level of $1 for every person a day.2 This figure represents the minimal amount on which a person can fulfil his or her physical needs, and a person is considered to be living in “absolute poverty” if his or her income falls below this line. By this measure, at the present time about 1.2 billion people are living in absolute poverty in developing and transition economies. The poverty line is calculated using “purchasing power parities,” which take into account difference in prices in goods in different countries, and so allows us to compare poverty levels internationally.

Table 1 shows the latest poverty figures for the different regions of the world. The picture contains both positive and negative elements. The number of people living on under $1 a day declined from 1993-6 but rose again by 1998 as a result of the effects of the global financial crisis which started in 1997. However, if China is excluded, the number of people …

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