Women are also more likely than men to be a lone parent bringing up children or to be an elderly person living alone. Poverty eradication strategies have often had a limited impact on improving women's situation since they are primarily concerned with the monetized economy and tend to target men directly as breadwinner. Household resources are often not equally shared within the family which seems to explain why poverty affects women in a different way than men. As a family gets poorer, the proportion of male income devoted to the family remains constant, while that of women actually increases.
In 1995 the USA announced its donation of US$1000 million to poor women in underdeveloped countries through a ten-year assistance programme organized primarily through women's NGOs.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the largest source of assistance within the UN system to projects involving and benefiting poor women in developing countries. Well over half of WFP development assistance directly supports women's economic advancement.