–– Paul Schlehlein

The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Calls for helping the world’s poor are ubiquitous. These cries arise from church pulpits, university professors, school textbooks, media channels, and especially government officials. Indeed, poverty exists all around the world. 

For example, Africa is by far the poorest continent globally. In 2023, twenty-three of the world’s twenty-five poorest countries were in Africa. In 2025, the country with the highest per capita GDP was Luxembourg at $141,080. The nation with the lowest per capita GDP was Burundi at $157, nearly 900 times less than Luxembourg. 

According to Visual Capitalist, South Africa has the greatest wealth inequality in the world. This means that, more than any other country, princes and paupers live side-by-side—or, more realistically—within distant sight of each other. But this is misleading, since the “poor” in South Africa are far wealthier than the middle class of, say, Malawi, where the per capita annual earningis $448 compared to $6,517 in South Africa.