We live in a world where economic positions – income and wealth – are very unevenly distributed,
and this leads to the widespread persistence of poverty.
The bottom half of humanity is living in severe poverty
not all of them are malnourished or severely deprived now,
but they are extremely vulnerable to even small upsets in their income or in the prices they face of basic necessities,
and when something like this happens,
they can be thrown off kilter in terms of a disease of a family member
or a change in food prices
anything like that can throw them into destitution.
Given the total income and wealth available in the world today,
we could easily overcome poverty,
which would require raising the share of the bottom half from three to roughly five percent.
Unfortunately, the trend is going in the opposite direction.