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Children and Poverty

Education Facts

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Student iconGet the facts about education in developing countries and how it affects children and adults.

Poverty and education are intertwined. In fact, one of the biggest contributors to global poverty is lack of access to education. The following facts about education are a snapshot of the problem and indicate how difficult it is for children in poverty to overcome the obstacles they face and escape their circumstances.

In order to effectively fight poverty around the world, the lack of education for children in developing countries, especially for girls, must be addressed.

  • In 2015, the total number of illiterate adults reached 745.1 million. 8
  • About 114 million young people, still lack basic reading and writing skills. 6 Two-thirds (63 percent) are women 7
  • Better enforcement of early marriage laws would increase average years of schooling for women in sub-Saharan Africa by 39 percent. 7
  • Three regions have achieved gender parity among adults and youth with regard to literacy: the Caucasus and Central Asia, developed regions, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Eastern Asia, South-Eastern Asia and Western Asia have achieved gender parity for youth literacy but not for adult literacy. 1
  • Northern Africa, Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are far from gender parity. In Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the adult literacy rate indicates that women aged 15 years and older are nearly one-quarter less likely to be literate than men in the same age group. 1
  • Globally, women aged 15 years and older are nine percent less likely to be literate than men, and young women between 15 and 24 years are four percent less likely to be literate than young men. 1
Through our child sponsorship program we offer children in poverty the opportunity to go to school and/or stay in school. We give them the chance to change the facts about education and change their future. When asked which component of our program was most beneficial to them, more than one-third of formerly sponsored children said “educational support.” 5
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  • In 2014, 61 million children of primary school age were not enrolled in school. 7
  • Girls make up 53 percent of the global population of children out of school. 7
  • Thirty-nine percent of the worldwide poor have no formal education at all. 9
  • 15 million girls of primary school age will never have the opportunity to learn to read and write in primary school, compared to about 10 million boys. 2
  • Forty-seven percent of the 32 million girls who were out of school in 2014 are expected to never go to school, compared with 35 percent of the 29 million boys. 7
  • One in six children in low and middle income countries will not complete primary school in 2015. 3
  • A sample of 31 low- and lower-middle-income African and South Asian countries, showed that, on average, an urban child is almost five times more likely to complete secondary education than a rural child. And a boy is 1.55 times more likely than a girl to complete secondary school. 4
  • In 2015, 82.6 per cent of women were literate, compared with 89.8 per cent of men. 8
  • Thirty countries have adult literacy rates below 70 percent; 22 of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. 8
  • Southern Asia is home to more than one-half of the global illiterate population (51 percent). 1
  • 26 percent of all illiterate adults live in sub-Saharan Africa. 1
  • Despite progress, gender disparity in youth literacy remains persistent in almost one in five countries. 1
When you sponsor a child, your sponsorship provides school fees, uniforms, books and supplies — without which children can’t attend school. Your money also provides basic necessities for the family so that child labor isn’t forced upon the child. Sponsor a child today to provide educational support to a child in need.

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Sources:

1 UNESCO Institute for Statistics Fact Sheet. September 2016, No. 38; 50th Anniversary of International Literacy Day: Literacy rates are on the rise but millions remain illiterate.

2 UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Out of School Children Policy Paper 27 / Fact Sheet 37, July 2016.

3 UNESCO, Education for All 2000-2015: Achievement and Challenges 2015.

4 World Bank Group. 2015. Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015: Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi: 10.1596/978-1-4648-0336-9. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO

5 Compassion International, Does International Child Sponsorship Work?, 2008.

6 UNDP. Human Development Report 2016. Human Development for Everyone.

7 UNESCO, 2016 Global Education Monitoring Report (Gender Review: Creating Sustainable Futures for All).

8 UNESCO. 2017. Reading the Past, Writing the Future: Fifty Years of Promoting Literacy.

9 World Bank. 2016. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016: Taking on Inequality. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-0958-3. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO