Almost a third have no access to clean water. A quarter do not have adequate housing. A fifth have no access to modern health services. A fifth of children do not attend school to grade 5. About a fifth do not have enough dietary energy and protein.
Micronutrient deficiencies are even more widespread.
The poor are most exposed to fumes and polluted rivers and least able to protect themselves. Of the estimated 2.7 million deaths each year from air pollution, 2.2 million are from indoor pollution, and 80 per cent of the victims are rural poor in developing countries. The Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs projects that world population will grow from 6 billion in 1999 to between 7.3 and 10.7 billion by 2050, with 8.9 billion considered most likely. The 3.4 billion difference between the high and low projections, which reflect varying assumptions about future fertility rates, is as much as the total world population in 1966. The current growth rate is 1.33 per cent.