To what extent can poverty be seen a priority government issue across the globe?

Poverty is one of the major global issues. Living in poverty is living in the lowest quality of life and lacking human necessities such as food, water, shelter, healthcare and education. Around 80% of the world’s population live on fewer than 2.5 U.S dollars a day, 20% living in extreme poverty and around 22,000 children are dying daily due to poverty. Many organizations such as The United Nations and The World Bank are slowly helping poverty decrease around the world, but without properly addressing poverty as a global issue there will not be enough help to stop poverty around the world.

This essay will address the issue about the government and public’s awareness of how much of an existing problem it actually is around the world, the aim is to achieve an idea of how much does the really put in to helping those in poverty and how aware are the general public of the current issue. 
Governments are often criticized about how they manage their money and what they spend it on. It is a well known fact that every countries Government spends the most of their money on military but how much do they spend on helping the people in their own country in need? and 


Hong Kong is a very populated and wealthy city with the population density of 6544 people per square kilometer. Despite Hong Kong being a very wealthy city, there are currently around 1.3 million people living under poverty line. The "South China Morning Post" found that one out of every five children and one out of three of the elderly live below the poverty line. There are a few local charity organizations that are working to fight poverty.

"Feeding Hong Kong" is one of the few organizations that helps people in poverty. Their goal is to reduce wasted food from reaching landfills and finding a safe and reliable way to give this food to the people in need.

"Oxfam Hong Kong" is also an organization start in 1963 that helps people in poverty, not only in Hong Kong but around the world. They are an independent organization who aims to fight against poverty and the injustice in the economy.

Although there are a few organizations around Hong Kong helping to fight against poverty, the government had only recently started to try to tackle poverty. Only late September 2013 did the government set the Poverty Line of $3600 per month as starting point to fight poverty. Recently the Hong Kong government has set a minimum wage of $30 per hour. The "Federation of Trade Unions" had a plan of a subsidy of $400-$1600 for the people living under the poverty line based on their working hours.

In the US around 46.5 million people (15%) live under the governments poverty line but even after a year of government aids and other non-governmental aids to try stop poverty, the Census Bureau measured the number of people in poverty being the same as it was year ago. 

 In 2012 the all that the U.S government needed to spend is 175 billion dollars to raise everyone up to the poverty line however they are able to spend 700 billion dollars on military instead. This is four times what is needed to stop poverty.

“United Nations Development Program” is one of the many United Nations programs that help with poverty. Unlike Hong Kong, America has identified and have been trying to tackle poverty for quite a while already.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/06/us-usa-economy-poverty-idUSBRE9A513820131106                                                                                                                                                                    http://www.thenation.com/article/176242/americas-shameful-poverty-stats#

http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1320690/sizing-poverty-hong-kong

http://feedinghk.org/about/our-mission/

http://hongwrong.com/hong-kong-population-density/

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1319984/hong-kong-draws-poverty-line-13-million-living-below-it?page=all

http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-global-poverty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/gaef3313.doc.htm