Humanosphere: Poverty rates are plummeting, unless you ask an American — they think they’re way up
Humanosphere reporter Tom Murphy writes, “More than 90 percent of Americans think that the number of people living in extreme poverty remained the same or got worse in the past 20 years. Just about everywhere, the survey found very few people who knew that the number of people living in extreme poverty was halved in the past 20 years. Motivaction International, a Dutch company, surveyed more than 26,000 people from 24 countries and found a massive knowledge gap. … Most people are pessimistic that extreme poverty will end by 2030 (rightly so) and do not know about the Sustainable Development Goals. Ninety-two percent said they have little to no knowledge about the SDGs. … The findings echo the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual report that examines U.S. views on foreign aid and global health. About five percent of people in the U.S. correctly know that less than one percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid. The average person thinks about 25 percent of the budget goes overseas…” (9/26).