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Poverty in Afghanistan
An estimated 39% of Afghans are living below the poverty line, leading to a wide gap in living standards between populations living in cities when compared to those in rural areas. Especially in the rural areas, families without enough access to nutrition see many infants and children become stunted, malnourished, and die each year.

The recent rise of poverty rates in Afghanistan can be associated to the stagnating economy. Currently the poverty line is defined as an income of 70 afghanis a day, which is equivalent to about 1 U.S. dollar. The Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey (ALCS) reported that the national poverty rate has risen from 38% in 2011-12 to 55% in 2016-2017, with the slowing economic growth and a deteriorating security situation as two causes. Over half of the population is living off less than a dollar a day. Another finding from the same report showed that from poverty many other problems branch out, as food insecurity has risen by 14.5% in five years, and despite large population growth, the agricultural industry and unemployment have both become increasingly worse. According to Azarakhsh Hafizi, a member of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce, the market economy of Afghanistan cannot operate without the necessary structure of legislation in the government.

Another criticism held by members of the Afghanistan Chamber is that foreign aid is doing more damage than helping, even creating an artificial economy based around foreign aid. Despite this cry against foreign aid, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published that in the 2018 Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan an estimated $83,368,135 will be donated to the food security and agriculture sector of the economy.

A report published by the United Nations Children's Fund in 2018 states that for the first time since 2002, the children out-of-school rate has increased, especially in poverty stricken provinces.

Poverty alleviation
Until 2017, no government monitoring on child poverty had taken place in Afghanistan. The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative began working in cooperation with the Central Statistics Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund of Afghanistan to aid the Afghanistan government in creating policies and budgets to help alleviate child poverty.

The United Nations Human Refugee Agency (UNHCR) issued a post-return shelter assistance program to assist displaced Afghanis coming back to Afghanistan after being refugees in neighboring countries. There was shown to be a 3% decrease of homelessness in areas where this plan was put in place. In order to help restart the public health system in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health created based on the Basic Package of Health Services in 2002. An analysis of the effectiveness of this plan revealed that while the plan was successful in implementing the package to both disabled or female-headed households, the impoverish were still barred off from health centers, hospitals, and private providers that required out of pocket payments.