64m More People to Live in Extreme Poverty Worldwide

Because of the global financial crisis and ensuring global recession, some 64 million more people will be living in extreme poverty by 2010.

Because of the continuing global recession, some 64 million more people will be living in extreme poverty by 2010, the World Bank said in a report released Tuesday.

Because of the global financial crisis and ensuring global recession, some 64 million more people will be living in extreme poverty by 2010, the World Bank said in a report released on Tuesday.

The crisis and recession have substantially increased the challenge of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets, according to the World Development Indicator (WDI) 2010 released by the Bank.

During 2000-2008, low and middle income countries averaged economic growth of 6.2 percent a year, and during 1999-2005 the number of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day fell by 325 million. Read more

SWS: More Filipinos are going hungry

MANILA, Philippines—Filipinos have adjusted to a miserable life that self-rated poverty matched a record-low posted over two decades ago although a record number experienced involuntary hunger, a Social Weather Stations survey (SWS) showed.

Of the 2,100 registered voters interviewed from March 19 to 22 by SWS, 43 percent (representing 8.1 million families) considered themselves poor, matching the record-low self-rated poverty set in March 1987.

A record-low 31 percent (5.9 million families) said they were food-poor. The previous record-low was 35 percent, set in June 2004.

However, the proportion of families that went hungry due to lack of food in the past three months remained relatively high—21.2 percent (4 million families), just 3 percentage points below the record-high 24 percent set in December. Read more