Income Generation Facts

• Around 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day, and 2.8 billion - half the world's population - live on less than $2 a day.

• About 500 million workers earn too little to keep their families above the $1 a day poverty line.

• The richest 50 million people in Europe and North America have the same income as 2.7 billion poor people.

• The slice of the cake taken by 1% is the same size as that handed to the poorest 57%."

• A study of 74 developing countries found that one in five households is headed by a woman: they are either widowed, divorced, separated or abandoned.

• Between 70 to 95% of the labour force in most developing countries works in agriculture, and in general poverty rates tend to be higher in rural than in urban areas.

• While 70 percent of the European Union's workers are involved in technology-intensive occupations, over half the world's population has yet to make a phone call.

• Most African farmers, 90% of whom are women, are producing well below the maximum possible through new seed varieties, farming practices, and fertiliser and insecticide use.

[Source: UNDP, World Bank, IFAD, PANOS, The Guardian, New Internationalist]