Poverty in the Shadow of Plenty

Photograph by Amanda Rivkin

With a bowl beside her, a child beggar sleeps on the street at midday on the main thoroughfare of Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, Georgia. Although the government of Georgia receives about $65 million in annual transit fees due to the BTC oil pipeline route across its territory, the nation has no mineral wealth of its own to exploit.

Thirty percent of Georgians live in poverty and the unemployment rate is 16 percent.

nationalgeographic.com