The BBC con­ducted a world­wide sur­vey ask­ing peo­ple what they thought was the biggest world­wide con­cern. Extreme poverty was ranked as the most impor­tant by a good mar­gin over the other problems.

The BBC ques­tioned peo­ple in 23 dif­fer­ent coun­tries on what they though were the big prob­lems fac­ing the world. Over 25,000 peo­ple were inter­viewed for the sur­vey. Respon­dents were given a list of prob­lems and were asked to give their opin­ion of the degree of it’s sever­ity, rang­ing from ‘very seri­ous’ to “not serious’.

From Domain b, we read more about the BBC survey

* 71% extreme poverty
* 64% the envi­ron­ment or pol­lu­tion
* 63% the ris­ing cost of food and energy
* 59% the spread of human dis­eases
* 59% ter­ror­ism
* 58% cli­mate change
* 59% human rights abuses
* 58% the state of the global econ­omy
* 57% war or armed con­flict
* 48% vio­la­tion of work­ers’ rights

In this year’s poll, poverty was rated as the most seri­ous global issue in 10 of the coun­tries polled, includ­ing in the UK, US, Kenya, Aus­tralia, Brazil and Chile. How­ever, in Rus­sia, Turkey, Mex­ico, Indone­sia and Nige­ria more felt that the ris­ing cost of food and energy was very serious.

The poll, which was con­ducted before the Copen­hagen sum­mit took place, also found that the Japan­ese were the only nation to regard cli­mate change as the most seri­ous global issue – although the Chi­nese and Costa Ricans iden­ti­fied envi­ron­men­tal issues more gen­er­ally or pol­lu­tion as the most serious.

The Chines ranked cli­mate change as the sec­ond most seri­ous issue, whereas Amer­i­cans ranked it ninth.
…

If poverty is seen as the world’s most seri­ous prob­lem, it is not the most top-of-mind. When respon­dents were asked to name spon­ta­neously ‘the most impor­tant issue fac­ing the world today’, eco­nomic prob­lems were most com­monly cited, with one in four men­tion­ing them (26%). Ter­ror­ism and war fol­lowed with 10 per cent.

And while poverty was some dis­tance ahead of other global issues in terms of how seri­ous it was seen to be, it was only one of a num­ber of issues that peo­ple had dis­cussed with friends and fam­ily recently. The great­est num­ber — 30 per cent — said they had talked about ris­ing food and energy costs with their friends and fam­ily recently, with extreme poverty and the spread of human dis­eases the sec­ond most dis­cussed issues (29 per cent) and the state of the global econ­omy third (28 per cent).

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