Local and Regional Poverty

Did you know that 31% of Clevelanders live in poverty?

This number of people would fill Gund Arena almost seven and a half times.

This is nine times the student population of Cleveland State University.

These figures come courtesy of The Hunger Network of Greater Cleveland. Visit their website for more local information on poverty.

How much do you know about welfare and poverty in Ohio? The Institute for Policy Studies and Cities for Peace have assembled a fact sheet and quiz.

Read The State of Poverty in Ohio 2004 report by the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies. Topics include income inequality, job availability, and welfare. Included are public policy recommendations.

Cuyahoga County has a larger number of poor people than the combined number of poor people in all the rural poor areas of Ohio. Read more about urban poverty in Ohio from the Ohio State University Family and Consumer Sciences Fact Sheet.

1 in 6 children in Ohio go to bed hungry every night. Learn more from Children's Hunger Alliance.

The Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland (CEOGC) is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to serving the low-income people of Greater Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. As the anti-poverty agency for Cuyahoga County, CEOGC brings together in one organization a broad array of federal, state and local programs and services that address the needs of low-income children and families. Education, training, and family development activities which promote economic self-sufficiency are central to the programs and services offered by CEOGC.

The Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio is a coalition of organizations and individuals committed to ending homelessness and to promoting decent, safe, fair, affordable housing for all, with a focus on assisting low-income people and those with special needs.

UHCAN Ohio works throughout Ohio for high quality, accessible, affordable and publicly accountable health care for all Ohioans through education, empowering people and organizations, and participation in the political process.

The Rural School and Community Trust has undertaken four state-level studies to address the effect that a school's size has on its academic performance based on the level of poverty in the community the school serves. Read about the Ohio results.

Policy Matters Ohio is a nonprofit research organization committed to broadening the debate on economic policy in Ohio and promoting decisions that benefit the whole community. They focus on issues that pertain to low-income and middle-income workers and providing readily accessible data and believe will result in economic policies that better reflect public interest.

CATALYST Cleveland is an independent publication created to document, analyze and support improvement efforts in Cleveland's public schools.

Global Poverty

Did you know that nearly three billion people--that is, half the people in the world--live on less than two dollars a day? Find out more about poverty around the world from Global Issues That Affect Everyone.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations' State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004 reported the following information:

As of July 2004, 35 countries faced food crises requiring emergency assistance.

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations estimates that 852 million people worldwide were undernourished in 2000-2002. This figure includes 815 million in developing countries, 28 million in the countries in transition and 9 million in industrialized countries.

More than 40 percent of all urban residents in developing countries live in slums. That means around 950 million people lack one or more of such basic services as access to sufficient living space, clean water and improved sanitation facilities. Many also lack access to adequate food, even though the urban poor in many developing countries spend 60 percent or more of their total expenditures on food.

In 50 developing countries for which data are available, primary school attendance for rural girls averaged only 58%, compared to 63% for rural boys and over 75% for urban children. As a result, around two thirds of the illiterate people in the developing world are women and the gender gap is significantly larger in rural areas.

General Information on Poverty

Decent healthcare is something all humanity can benefit from. Unfortunately, many do not have anything like the kind of healthcare we have in the United States, even with the unequal distribution and barriers to access found here. To read an abstracted version of Agenda item 3: Substantive issues rising in the implementation of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, formulated by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at their twenty-second session, held in Geneva, 25 April-12 May 2000, please click here.

For a broad view of poverty, please visit The Journal of Poverty: Innovations on Social, Political & Economic Inequalities. This journal intends to encourage thought and discussion on the way poverty is defined from a variety of perspectives. From the main page, you can view a sample issue.

Do you want to know more about welfare reform? The Welfare Information Network is a clearinghouse for information, policy analysis, and technical assistance related to welfare, workforce development, and other human and community services.

The Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change seeks to address the problems of persistent and concentrated urban poverty and is dedicated to understanding how social and economic changes affect low-income communities, and how living in these communities affects the well-being of their residents.

The Joint Center for Poverty Research is a national and interdisciplinary academic research center that seeks to advance our understanding of what it means to be poor in America.

To read research papers from a variety of disciplines, visit Cornell University's Poverty, Inequality, and Development site.

For an argument supporting the global relationship between trade and poverty, click here.

The Poverty and Race Research Action Council is a not-for-profit organization committed to linking social science research to advocacy work in order to address the problems at the intersection of race and poverty.

What does the research say about poverty, welfare, and battered women?

• National Law Center on Homelessness &Poverty
  http://www.nlchp.org
• Families USA: The Voice for Healthcare Consumers
  http://www.familiesusa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=homepage
• Children and Poverty
  http://www.futureofchildren.org/
• Children's Defense Fund
  http://www.childrensdefense.org/
• Child Welfare League of America
  http://www.cwla.org/
• Center for Law and Social Policy
  http://www.clasp.org/
• American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
  http://www.aphsa.org/
• Center for Community Solutions
  http://www.communitysolutions.com/