00:00More than 1.2 billion people around the world are living in acute poverty, and more than half of them
00:06are children.
00:07That's according to a new report by the United Nations Development Programme.
00:12It found that 51.5 million more people are living in poverty than last year.
00:20The report produced with Oxford University's Poverty and Human Development Initiative shows
00:25the number of people living in acute poverty has risen for the first time since the index was introduced in
00:312010.
00:32The head of the UN Development Programme, Alexander De Kroh, calls the figures a wake-up call,
00:38warning that too many people continue to face multiple hardships at once.
00:42However, UNDP said a major factor in the recorded increase was population growth.
00:48It also cautions that new data was available for just 13 of the 108 countries covered in the report,
00:55and there has been some progress.
00:57Over the past 15 years, 33 countries have halved their poverty rates,
01:01with China and Vietnam among those making the fastest progress.
01:06But the biggest burden remains in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia,
01:10where most of the people living in acute poverty are concentrated.
01:14The report measures more than just income,
01:16looking at whether people have access to basics such as food,
01:20clean water, electricity, housing and education.
01:25So we're not paying for money anymore when we can send people to the UN in the openough country,
