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extreme poverty

concept · in 58 videos (2007–2026)

Absolute poverty: surviving on very little a day without adequate resources for food, water and other basics. Later he ties it to tuberculosis, malnutrition and failing health care in impoverished regions.

Videos by year: 2007: 4 · 2008: 1 · 2009: 2 · 2010: 2 · 2011: 4 · 2012: 3 · 2013: 4 · 2014: 11 · 2015: 6 · 2016: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2018: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2026: 3

Also known as: global poverty, the poorest people, less than $2 a day, is poverty necessary

Threads

Also named in the threads: Foundation to Decrease World Suck: the Brotherhood 2.0 fund (2007) · Hank asks viewers to vote for P4A 2013 videos at projectforawesome.com (2013) · John asks viewers to raise $100,000 via Water.org for clean water in Ethiopia, matched by Bill Gates (2014) · John keeps looking away while filming sick children and worried mothers in Ethiopia (2014) · P4A 2014 edition · John: look at the big problems from Davos (income inequality, climate change, refugees, gender inequality and poverty) in coming weeks (2016)

Questions

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

child mortality (18) · progress (8) · global health (7) · education (6) · malaria (5) · aid effectiveness (3) · economic inequality (4) · United States (14) · othering (3) · climate change (6)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2007

  • 2007-06-13 · June 13: Dominican Debacles — Hank: Their dad arranged for the brothers to visit a village and some of the people in those situations; Hank calls it really awesome and a look at what the country is actually like. — 00:02:08
    • Hank says viewers will get to see some of the village visit, just not in this video. — 00:02:08
  • 2007-06-14 · Brotherhood 2.0: June 14: Good News/Bad News — announcement: John thinks they learned a lot about microfinance, poverty and real life in the Dominican Republic, and look forward to making those videos back home. (hedged) — 00:01:48
  • 2007-06-28 · June 28: How to Be a Microfinancier — John says about 60% of people in the Dominican Republic live in extreme poverty and about half of those live on less than one dollar a day. (doubtful: about 60%) — 00:00:00
    • John says the brothers' Dominican Republic resort was swank, but they took one day to visit 'the real Dominican Republic', where regular people live in poverty. — 00:00:00
    • John explains a cycle of poverty: without collateral the very poor get no bank loans, so cannot start businesses, so there are no jobs and the economy stays weak. — 00:00:45
    • John recalls visiting a group of women graduating, in their own neighborhood, from five weeks of microfinance training in banking basics and business planning. — 00:01:14
    • John recommends Kiva.org, which lets anyone be a microfinancier: you give money directly to someone in extreme poverty and they pay you back. — 00:02:36
  • 2007-06-29 · How to be a Microfinancier Part 2 — Hank thanks John for yesterday's video and is glad they finally shared some of what they saw in the Dominican Republic. — 00:00:11
    • Hank adds what John did not share: after questioning the graduating women about their businesses, the women asked about the brothers' sisters and marriages and argued which brother was cuter (John won). — 00:00:57

2008

  • 2008-03-04 · SETTING THE QUESTION TUESDAY WORLD RECORD — John: Answering several questions at once, John says yes to a trip to Nepal and to using his radio pieces as monologues, and names poverty as the world problem he would make go away. (playful) — 00:03:20

2009

  • 2009-10-11 · Puppy Elephant Defends Capitalism — John says the entrepreneurs he lends to in the developing world live on less than a dollar a day. — 00:02:38
    • John says money can't buy love but can buy longer, healthier, more secure lives, and it is amazing to watch tiny loans bring people out of poverty at no cost to him. — 00:03:00
  • 2009-12-01 · Shaving for Pakistan — John says Pakistan's economy has grown in recent years but per-capita GDP by purchasing power is under $1,000 a year: on average people live on less than $3 a day. (doubtful: less than a thousand dollars a year; doubtful: less than three dollars a day) — 00:01:03

2010

  • 2010-01-15 · Introduction to Chemistry with Hank — ask: Hank says Nerdfighter Shawn Ahmed, doing amazing work in Bangladesh, is one of five finalists to possibly attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, and asks everyone to vote for him via the sidebar. — 00:02:55
  • 2010-09-17 · Positive Prank Calls!! — Hank says global poverty rates have dropped 30 percent since 1990 and are on track to drop another 10 percent before 2015. — 00:01:48

2011

  • 2011-03-07 · Why is Haiti Poor? — Hank recalls that long ago he and John went to the Dominican Republic and toured with a microfinance organization; that video is deep in the Brotherhood 2.0 archives. — 00:00:51
    • Hank says Haiti's situation is not good and dares anyone to find a solution, because no one can. — 00:03:23
    • Hank says that does not mean we can't help people in small ways; he is excited to be part of that and hopes to let viewers help in future. (hedged) — 00:03:27
  • 2011-08-29 · A Letter to the Aliens — Hank says that without money it is hard to get food and shelter; people still regularly die from lack of money; most find this troubling, but attempts at better solutions have not fully succeeded. — 00:02:59
  • 2011-09-26 · Awesome Bankers? — John worries most for the hundreds of millions of people who emerged from poverty in the last 40 years, since developing-world entrepreneurs depend much more on low-interest loans (taxi parts, farm animals, cosmetics, restaurant food). — 00:01:56
  • 2011-10-26 · 7,000,000,000 People — Hank: Good news, per Hank: birth rates are down to 2.5 babies per woman, near replacement; contraception use is up dramatically; disease and poverty rates are lower; education is higher. — 00:02:11

2012

  • 2012-08-21 · Is College Worth It? — John: With about half of humans living on less than $2.50 a day, John calls the chance to study formally a gift, even if a very expensive one. — 00:03:38
  • 2012-12-11 · Economics and Dentistry: YOUTUBE'S FAVORITE TOPICS — John says the Foundation to Decrease World Suck was set up in 2007 to fund things like Nerdfighters' first concerts and fighting global poverty, and since 2008 has focused on global poverty as more important. — 00:00:29
  • 2012-12-17 · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2012 IS HERE! Save the Children. — John says about 1.4 billion people live in absolute poverty, surviving on less than $1.25 a day with inadequate resources for food, water and other basics (last word unclear). — 00:00:23
    • John says poverty is an incredibly complex problem: corrupt governments, malaria and HIV/AIDS, climate change and energy policy hurting food production, malnutrition, poor infrastructure and education, and discrimination all contribute. — 00:00:52
    • John says children first have to survive to five, and that cutting childhood illness and death rates also cuts poverty rates. — 00:02:20

2013

  • 2013-01-15 · An Evening of Awesome at Carnegie Hall — Hank: Asked what most decreased world suck, Hank names P4A but recalls their first-year visit to a microfinance organization in the Dominican Republic; microfinance seems to really work. (hedged) — 01:55:09
  • 2013-06-07 · How To Be a Baby Properly — Hank: if all goes well, in Alice's lifetime humans will walk on Mars, computers become intelligent, the paralyzed walk again, absolute poverty all but end, and she may live past 100; or technological society may implode. It could go either way. (hedged) — 00:00:12
  • 2013-12-17 · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2013 IS UPON US! — ask: John asks viewers to vote at projectforawesome.com for Save the Children and other organizations fighting poverty and disease in the developing world. — 00:03:28
  • 2013-12-31 · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John says absolute poverty is down worldwide; the UN estimates poverty fell more in the last 50 years than in the previous 500. — 00:01:07
    • John says the share of people living on under $1.25 a day, adjusted for inflation, fell from 43% in 1990 to 20% today, mostly through gains in China, India and Brazil. — 00:01:21
    • John says wealth inequality remains a huge problem worldwide, but in the vast majority of countries the poor are becoming less poor. — 00:01:36

2014

  • 2014-01-21 · Are Poor Countries Doomed? — John: Myth one: John says it is not true that poor countries, especially in Africa, are doomed to stay poor forever, a claim he hears all the time. — 00:00:57
  • 2014-04-29 · Influence, Airports, and the Nerdfighter Book Club — John says the people of Annawadi whom Katherine Boo writes about live above the global poverty line and participate in, some would say benefit from, global capitalism, with complicated results. — 00:02:59
  • 2014-06-10 (said on 2014-06-07, implied) · Our Old Friend Complexity: Behind the Beautiful Forevers — John says outsiders imagine slum residents monolithically, but the book shows much diversity of class and status in Annawadi, a Mumbai slum: not all poverty is equal. — 00:00:45
  • 2014-07-29 · Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — John says humans are generous within their social networks, but lack of access to Tumblr and YouTube leaves people in absolute poverty voiceless online, so we imagine their problems as other. — 00:02:22
  • 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John: The hope is that sustainable higher yields bring Ethiopia growth and poverty reduction like China, Brazil and India; the program seems to be working but is extremely complicated. (hedged) — 00:04:41
  • 2014-09-09 · Going to College (in Ethiopia) — John says these young people have seen the greatest drops in poverty and infant mortality in Ethiopia's history, yet tens of thousands of Ethiopian children still die yearly of easily preventable diseases. — 00:03:39
  • 2014-09-23 · Looking Away — John says the poor are voiceless in too much contemporary discourse: the boy's mother has no Twitter or YouTube channel, so we hear her challenges less directly than others'. — 00:01:04
    • John says Ethiopia is still one of the world's poorest countries: malnutrition is common and almost half of Ethiopians don't have access to clean water. — 00:01:38
  • 2014-09-29 · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Progress — Bill Gates: Gates says inventions often go unrecognized as useful for poor countries: slow-leaking thermoses were invented about 15 years ago, yet nobody applied them to the cold-chain problem. — 00:00:27
  • 2014-10-07 · I Kind of Hate Batman — John asks why no one calls Batman out for spending all his resources on crime in Gotham when he could also fight global poverty, habitat destruction or climate change. (hedged) — 00:02:39
  • 2014-11-19 · The Future of the Project for Awesome: Pizzamas Day 8 — John proposes that day one of the P4A raise money for three organizations known to be excellent and efficient against global poverty and disease, attracting matching donations and fighting a known cause of world suck. — 00:02:41
  • 2014-11-28 · Global Health and Human Hair: What the Vlogbrothers are Thankful For — John: we are maybe only 30 or 40 years from the vast majority of poor countries being middle-income countries. (hedged) — 00:00:43
  • …and 11 statements more in 2014 — all statements of 2014

2015

  • 2015-01-27 · Will Life Get Better for the Poor? — John says the Gates letter predicts that in the next 15 years the lives of the world's poorest people will become dramatically better. — 00:00:10
    • John says hundreds of millions of people have left absolute poverty in the last 25 years, child mortality has been cut by half, and more kids than ever are vaccinated. — 00:00:16
    • John calls all of that totally unacceptable and also unnecessary. — 00:01:04
    • John says global child mortality halved in the last 25 years, and the Gates letter argues it can halve again in the next 15, without expensive specialists or new procedures. — 00:01:09
  • 2015-02-10 · Understanding Boko Haram — John says that while Nigeria's overall economy grows over 8% a year, absolute poverty in the north is actually increasing. — 00:02:50
  • 2015-07-03 · Thoughts from Yachts — Hank hopes growing productivity will one day give everyone enough to minimize suffering, but in Cannes and Saint-Tropez he worries no one will ever be satisfied, so wealth keeps concentrating instead of serving global goals like ending poverty, war and climate insecurity. (hedged) — 00:02:08
  • 2015-09-22 · Is Poverty Necessary? Looking back at the Millennium Development Goals — John: Goal one, halving extreme poverty and hunger between 1990 and 2015, seemed impossible but was done: 1.9 billion people lived on under $1.25 a day in 1990, now over a billion fewer. — 00:00:38
    • Most of the fall in poverty came from China, South Asia and South America, but the poverty rate in sub-Saharan Africa has also fallen since 1990. — 00:01:01
    • Young people watching may be among the first humans to see a world where extreme poverty and hunger are rare. (hedged) — 00:03:47
  • 2015-09-25 · Pissed Off for a Better World — Hank: Every child should go to school, no one should be hungry or in extreme poverty, and corrupt governments and greed should not stand in the way of the goals. — 00:01:27
  • 2015-12-11 · The Refugee Crises: Project for Awesome 2015 — John says infant mortality has halved in the last 25 years, the share of kids in school has skyrocketed, and global poverty has diminished. — 00:03:00
    • John says he sees donations to Save the Children or the UNHCR as investments, not gifts: healthier, better-educated kids become productive adults and the cycle of poverty can be broken. — 00:03:18

2016

2017

  • 2017-02-14 · Human Life Is Getting Better. Faster Than Ever Before. — recommendation: John recommends Our World in Data as an amazing resource for understanding changes in the human condition over time, from literacy to life expectancy, praising its overviews of child mortality and absolute poverty; the In a Nutshell video he references was made with it. — video description
    • John says that in 1998 30% of all humans lived in absolute poverty, surviving on less than $2 a day in current US dollars. — 00:00:29
    • John says that today 80% of kids in low-income countries are vaccinated, fewer than 10% of people live in absolute poverty, and fewer than 6 million children will die this year (2017). — 00:00:36
    • John says most children who die still die only because they were born poor, which is unacceptable and need not be accepted. — 00:02:23
    • Melinda French Gates (quoted): Melinda Gates, as John relays her, points out that no country in the last 50 years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives. — 00:03:18
    • John says that in 20 years (by 2037), when today's median viewer is his age, absolute poverty and child mortality may be rare everywhere on Earth. (hedged) — 00:03:25
    • John believes humanity's success is best judged not by how the richest or best connected live but by how the poor, oppressed and vulnerable live. — 00:03:36
  • 2017-07-18 · Accio Decade Hallows — John recalls Hank's idea that bad news usually comes all at once and good news slowly: declines in absolute poverty, child mortality and violent deaths go unreported because they are decades-long processes, not events. — 00:00:09
  • 2017-08-22 · The Causes of Cholera — John says he really believes all human lives are equally valuable, but he can't live that belief if he can't empathize with people living in poverty or in fear of cholera. — 00:03:38
  • 2017-09-19 · Why Cities? — recommendation: John calls Our World in Data an amazing resource for long-term trends in human history and the source of his graphs on falling absolute poverty and declining hours worked. — video description
    • Absolute poverty is declining dramatically. — 00:02:55
  • 2017-12-12 · 2017 is the Best? — John: By some measures 2017 is the best year in history (not Twitter's): absolute poverty is at its lowest share, schooling and adult literacy at their highest, and cancer death rates are down globally. — 00:00:48

2018

  • 2018-08-21 · SYSTEMS!!!! — John: Learning about global health, John has seen again and again that fragile systems can improve and that a focus on health in the largest sense can improve every part of community life. — 00:03:26
  • 2018-12-07 · BABIES! The 2018 Project for Awesome is here… — John says these children are far more likely to go to school and less likely to experience extreme poverty or malnutrition. — 00:01:27

2019

  • 2019-10-01 · Why Are Poor Countries Poor? — John describes a paradox common to poor countries: almost none of Kono's diamond wealth stays there, so one of West Africa's richest areas is among the world's poorest and least healthy, with few mine jobs for locals. — 00:03:24
    • Nothing about Sierra Leone's poverty is natural or inevitable, so John doesn't think it is permanent; evidence worldwide shows systems can strengthen so more mothers and children survive. — 00:07:52
  • 2019-10-25 · Unscripted and Unhinged — Hank says poverty, illness and hardship are taxes that pay for nothing: they make stability and contribution harder, and losing your mother lowers your odds of stability for life. — 00:01:42

2020

  • 2020-01-28 · Looking Away (Again) — John recalls making a video from Ethiopia six years ago called Looking Away, about listening to and supporting people living in absolute poverty. — 00:02:20
  • 2020-08-21 · The Water's Getting Warm — Hank questions the line: cancer, kind of, nuclear proliferation and poverty are also global collective problems; it depends on what he meant by collective. (hedged) — 00:00:00

2021

2023

  • 2023-07-18 · Tuberculosis Fighters Have a Posse — John says tuberculosis is ultimately caused by crowded living conditions, malnutrition and other symptoms of poverty, which he calls the world's leading cause of death. — 00:04:22

2025

  • 2025-01-28 · This Is Not Normal — John says many things had to go right for that drop: insulin and antibiotics, safer surgery, and lower rates of absolute poverty, malnutrition and tuberculosis. — 00:01:27
    • John says about 36% of people lived in absolute poverty in 1995 and about 10% do today. — 00:02:26

2026

  • 2026-04-28 · What I Can't Show You — John says KGH's infrastructure is woefully insufficient for a profoundly impoverished region of 600,000: no ICU, and the sickest children's ward had two or three children per bed. — 00:01:27
  • 2026-05-01 · Despair is Not Wisdom — Hank: On the US aid cuts, Hank says we cannot be numb to the brutality of the richest man in the world taking aid from the poorest people; he will never forgive it and finds it monstrous. — 00:01:27
  • 2026-10-20 · Correcting a Mistake in Everything Is Tuberculosis · 50 x 50 Science — John: Lowering rates of absolute poverty reduced malnutrition, a huge risk factor for tuberculosis. — 00:02:26