There are also a large number of hungry people living in sprawling urban slums, ghettos, and shanty towns. Many hundreds of millions of people in the poorer countries are preoccupied solely with survival and elementary needs. For them work is frequently not available or when it is, pay is very low and conditions often barely tolerable. Homes are constructed of impermanent materials and have neither piped water nor sanitation. Electricity is a luxury.
Permanent insecurity is the condition of the poor.
There are no public systems of social security in the event of unemployment, sickness or death of a wage-earner in the family. Flood, drought or disease affecting people or livestock can destroy livelihoods without hope or compensation. It is a condition of life so limited as to be, in the words of the President of the World Bank, below any rational definition of human decency. Hungry people most often are illiterate, unhealthy, and without political power. The give birth to more children than do other people, and their children die at a much higher rate.