4 December 2002
To achieve the millennium development goals of cutting global poverty and hunger by 2015, population concerns must be addressed critically, a UN report on State of World Population 2002 has warned.
The report, by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) released on Monday in London said that urgent action was needed to combat poor reproductive health, eliminate illiteracy and gender discrimination in order to reduce poverty in developing countries.
The report indicated that developing countries with lower fertility and slower population growth rates had registered faster economic growth, higher productivity, more savings and more productive investment.
"Investments in health and education, and gender equality are vital to this effect," it said, adding that social investments attacked poverty directly and empowered individuals, especially women.
"Poor health, illiteracy, inadequate schooling, social exclusion, powerlessness and gender discrimination contribute to poverty," said the report, disclosing that the overall gap between the rich and the poor, globally and within countries, had been growing.
It noted that more women than men lived in poverty and the disparity had increased over the past decade, particularly in developing countries, stressing that reducing the gender gap in health and education would reduce individual poverty and encourage economic growth.
"Poor health is a cause and a consequence of poverty," the report stated, explaining that poor people in a 41-country survey cited ill-health most frequently as the major cause of their slide into poverty.
The report further said that HIV/AIDS posed a great threat to development in poor countries and noted that the impact was hardest among the poor, pointing out that in the 1990s, AIDS reduced Africa's per capital annual growth by 0.8 per cent.
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