Poverty in Underdeveloped Countries—The Poorest of the Poor - Asia: The Largest And Most Populous Continent

In terms of both land mass and number of people, Asia is the largest continent on earth, with four billion people in approximately fifty countries covering about 17.2 million square miles, including parts of Siberia (North Asia); China, Japan, Taiwan, and the Korean Peninsula (East Asia, or the Far East); the Middle East, including the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf countries, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, the Near East countries of Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, and parts of North Africa (West Asia); India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives (South Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent); Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia (Southeast Asia); Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (Central Asia). Because the borders around Asia have never been permanently defined, experts disagree on the total number of countries on the continent, and even the distinctions outlined here are in dispute. Sometimes, for example, East and Southeast Asia are discussed together as "East Asia and the Pacific."

The continent of Asia is home to two-thirds of the world's people—and almost two-thirds of the world's poor. There are approximately 2,269 distinct living (currently used) languages spoken in Asia—415 of them in India alone—and no fewer than nine major religions were founded and continue to be practiced on the continent. With such geographic, ethnic, and cultural diversity, Asia is a region of immense economic differences, housing at the same time some of the wealthiest people in the world and some of the most startlingly poor, many of whom reside in the fourteen least developed Asian countries.