Share of global consumption and population in different regions

In 2007 about 2.66 billion people lived at or just above the breadline ( 2 per day) and about 0.92 billion people in extreme poverty ( 1 per day). The number of consumers with an annual income greater than 10,294 (this level is considered the poverty threshold in Western Europe) constituted 1.76 billion people in 2006. 

As can be seen from Table 7.13, almost half of consumers live in developing countries, China and India constituting more than 20%, although of course the average Chinese or Indian consumes much less than the average West European. 

In addition to Sub-Saharan Africa being a disaster-prone region, the level of consumption there in 2001 was 20% lower than in any year of the two previous decades. According to available estimates, the number of consumers will at least double by 2015. Table 7.14 illustrates the number of consumers in ten representative countries in 2002, and Table 7.15 family expenditure on food in different countries in 1998. 

The overwhelming—some would say criminal—feature of domestic consumption is that it is not aimed at satisfying basic levels of comfort or survival, but has to do with expense on luxury items (sports cars, jewelry, vacations, cruises, etc.). Such expense has reached huge levels (tens of billions of dollars). Satisfying such basic things as the need for food, drinking water, education, and healthcare for the world s poorest is possible with a mere fraction of these expenses. 

The necessity to satisfy the growth in consumption leads to an increase in the use of natural resources. Between 1960 and 1995 the global use of mineral raw materials increased by a factor of 2.5 metals 2.1, wood 2.3, and synthetic materials 5.6. This increase considerably exceeded the growth in population size, despite its extreme nonuniformity. For instance, the U.S.A. whose population constitutes about 5% of the world s consumes about one-fourth of the global resources of fossil fuel. The U.S.A., 

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Table 7.12. Share of global consumption and population in different regions.

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