Poverty, Income and Gender Inequality
Maldives has successfully achieved their Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of people living under the poverty line to a mere 1% as of 2011. Starvation is non-existent, HIV rates have fallen and malaria has been eradicated. Despite these accomplishments and progressive economic growth, developmental issues remain. In particular, the country needs to address income and gender disparities. Development in Maldives has occurred predominantly in the capital Male’; islands outside the capital continue to encounter high poverty vulnerability, lower per-capita income, lower employment and limited access to social services. A country-wide household income survey in 1997-1998 showed that the average income in the capital Male’ was 75% higher than in surrounding islands. Maldives’s Gini co-efficient stands at 0.41 and 0.3 million Maldivians continue to live on less than $1 a day.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of The Maldives
Famous quotes containing the words income, gender and/or inequality:
“Some rough political choices lie ahead. Should affirmative action be retained? Should preference be given to people on the basis of income rather than race? Should the system be—and can it be—scrapped altogether?”
—David K. Shipler (b. 1942)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)