Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1.3 SPACE AND
DEVELOPMENT
WHY SPACE MATTERS
An Unequal World
While there is a strong argument that in the realm of social policy the
focus should be on poor people rather than poor places, this has to be
evaluated against the remarkable degree to which the world can be
divided into rich and poor areas, cities, regions, nations and continents.
Additionally, all the available evidence shows that the world is continu-
ing to get more uneven and unequal. Inequality across space can be
seen as one of the major characteristics of the world in which we live,
both within and between countries. In short, space matters as part of
the development equation.
Around the world, a high proportion of people still face conditions
that can only be described as far from acceptable. In August 2008, the
World Bank presented a major overhaul of their estimates of the inci-
dence of global poverty. What used to be measured as US$1 a day was
then changed to $1.25 a day. Some 1.4 billion people live at or below
this level - representing 21.7 per cent of the world's population (Table
1.3.1). This means that more people are living in poverty than was pre-
viously believed - as this was estimated at 984 million with the old
measure of $1 in 2004; however, almost half the world's population -
some 3.14 billion people - live on $2.50 a day or less (Table 1.3.1). The
table also reveals that around 80 per cent of the world's population cur-
rently lives on US$10 a day or less, amounting to a staggering 5.15
billion people in total.
The proportion of the world's population living on US$1.25 fell by
some 25 per cent between 1981 and 2005, as indicated in Figure 1.3.1A.
During the same period, China's poverty fell from 85 per cent to 15.9
