"We must recall that the poor around the world lack not merely pocket money, denying them the toys of the rich, but access to the most basic necessities of human life. Official estimates show 830 million humans chronically undernourished, 1,100 million lacking access to safe water, and 2,600 million lacking access to basic sanitation.About 2,000 million lack access to essential drugs.Some 1,000 million have no adequate shelter and 2,000 million lack electricity.Some 774 million adults are illiterate and 218 million children between five and seventeen do wage work outside their household—often under harsh or cruel conditions: as soldiers, prostitutes, or domestic servants, or in agriculture, construction, and textile or carpet production.Roughly one-third of all human deaths, 18 million annually, are due to poverty-related causes, easily avoidable through better nutrition, safe drinking water, cheap rehydration packs, vaccines, antibiotics, and other medicines.People of color, females, and the very young are heavily overrepresented among the global poor, and hence also among those suffering the staggering effects of severe poverty."And then,"Most of the massive severe poverty persisting in the world today is avoidable through more equitable institutions that would entail minuscule opportunity costs for the affluent. It is for the sake of trivial economic gains that national and global elites are keeping billions of human beings in life-threatening poverty with all its attendant evils such as hunger and communicable diseases, child labor and prostitution, trafficking, and premature death. Considering this situation from a moral standpoint, we must now assess growth—both globally and within most countries—in terms of its effect on the economic position of the poor."Thomas Pogge