Indigenous Peoples Still Among Poorest in World, but Progress Reported in Some Countries
Publisher/Organizer: World Bank
Publication date: 2010
Number of pages: 339
Language: English
Overview
“Indigenous Peoples worldwide continue to be among the poorest of the poor and continue to suffer from higher poverty, lower education, and a greater incidence of disease and discrimination than other groups, according to a new World Bank study: Indigenous Peoples, Poverty, and Development.
Released at the Ninth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the study offers a "global snapshot” of a set of indicators for Indigenous Peoples vis-à-vis national demographic averages. It also considers in detail how social conditions have evolved in seven countries around the world (Central African Republic, China, Congo, Gabon, India, Laos and Vietnam).
The study shows how success in some Asian countries at achieving sustained growth and poverty reduction has helped their Indigenous Peoples to achieve better poverty, health, and education outcomes. A poverty gap still persists, however, between indigenous and non-indigenous populations, and while the gap is narrowing in China, it is stable or widening in most other countries.
The report provides both a grand overview of basic statistics across indigenous groups, and a series of in-depth country chapters. Large scale household surveys or census data were used to document poverty and other socio-economic trends (health, education) among Indigenous Peoples in the countries analyzed.
Combined with earlier case studies for five Latin American countries – “Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin America,” (Hall and Patrinos 2006) – the new study offers a set of detailed results for almost 80 percent of the world’s indigenous population.
Turning the situation around will require widespread and sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction, along with well designed programs that target Indigenous Peoples….”