Mapping Poverty
Image from PovertyMap.net. Click to enlarge (PDF).
If you ever wanted to know what the projected world population for 2015 is, or the relationship between poverty and internal conflict, or simply quantify the growing disparity between the incomes of rich and poor countries, you’ll find an abundance of visual data regarding these and other issues relating to poverty around the globe at PovertyMap.net.
Poverty maps are visual tools that illustrate “linkages between poverty and food insecurity, the environment, and development,” and are essential tools for government agencies, non-governmental organizations, or the concerned citizen. You’ll find an example in the World Bank Report, which combined survey and census data to draw up poverty maps to show where the areas of greatest need policymakers should focus scarce resources on were.
What started out as a project funded by the Norwegian government is now a comprehensive database maintained by the United Nations Environment Programme and compiled using sources such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Food Policy Research Institute, and the Worldwatch Institute.
Go ahead, click around at your leisure—you just might gain a more-informed perspective of what’s going on in this crazy, mixed-up planet of ours. I know I did, and, for perhaps the first time, can think of nothing else to add.
[via World Ark]
Further resources:
1. “The causes of poverty,” GlobalIssues.org
2. Millenium Development Goals: Poverty
3. UN Division on Social Policy and Development: Poverty Eradication
