This isn't a surprise in about absolute poverty - fortunately we know what to do

Unicef has released a report about that 10% of humanity that is still stuck in that horror of absolute poverty. One of the things they say about it is obvious after a moment's thought:

Children are disproportionately affected by extreme poverty – they make up just a third of the population studied, but comprise half of the extreme poor. They are twice as likely as adults to be living on less than $1.90 a day, the report claims, with 19.5% of children in developing countries living in extremely poor households, compared to just 9.2% of adults.

There is nothing odd or surprising about this. That moment's thought will tell us that it's going to be this way. Absolute poverty includes those horrific child mortality rates that so afflicted everywhere until recently. Thus children are going to be a majority of that absolutely poor society - just as they were when all were that poor.

Ending Extreme Poverty: A Focus on Children – a briefing note from the World Bank Group and UNICEF – finds that children in developing countries are more than twice as likely as adults to live in extreme poverty. 

There is also the point that someone earning $10 a day will not have his family in extreme poverty if there are four of them in total and will if there are eight. And yes, the report points to sub-Saharan Africa as the great concentration of this sort of poverty. And Sub-Saharan Africa is perhaps the last major area of the world where fertility rates have not dropped towards replacement rate. No, this isn't about contraception not being available. Desired fertility also hasn't fallen to replacement rate.

Fortunately, while this is all obvious we know what we nee to do to wipe this stain from the planet. Continue to do what we've been doing this past 40 years. That neoliberal globalisation which has driven the greatest reduction in absolute poverty in the history of our entire species.

As Madsen of this parish points out, we should buy goods made by poor people in poor countries. Extend that concept to preferentially doing to with goods from sub-Saharan Africa and we'll get there faster than any other method.