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Qashem Mollah, whose 19-year-old daughter Parveen Akter is missing in the rubble of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh.

Almost one month after a garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing at least 1,127, relatives still gather daily at the site amid the rubble holding pictures of their missing loved ones. Almost all the pictures are of women.

“We have looked for her body everywhere and asked everyone,” said Qashem Mollah, whose 19-year-old daughter Parveen Akter had worked at the doomed Rana Plaza for three years. “The police don’t tell us anything and just dismiss us.”

Identifying bodies that are found in the rubble is now almost impossible, as daytime temperatures reach more than 86F and hopes diminish of a repeat of miracles such as the mother who survived 16 days under the wreckage.

“The faces had gone, there was nothing left of them, it was horrible,” said Mollah.“My daughter has gone, she was everything to us. We have lost everything.”

As the eldest child, Parveen provided for her family of nine living 150 miles away in the rural district of Pabna.

Mollah is too ill to work, and the family - which also included her grandparents - relied on Parveen to survive. With overtime, Parveen was able to earn up to $102 a month to feed them all.

Her story has echoes throughout the Bangladesh garment industry, where salaries often support large extended families.

Of the four million people working in clothing factories, 85 per cent are women, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

“I wish I had a garments job instead of laboring in the fields, look at my hands,” said Alisha Begum, who had come to the scene of the disaster to look for the body of her younger sister, Rehana. Her mother held a piece of paper with her daughter’s details.

“I can’t read or write which why I have to work out in the sun. Without basic reading, you can’t get a job in this type of factory.”

Her farm income was small, meaning her dead sister not only supported the whole family but also Alisha’s husband. “Hundreds of people have come from our district for these jobs,” she added.

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The mother and sister of missing 19-year-old worker Parveen Akter.

The ready-made garments (RMG) industry accounts for more than 75 per cent of Bangladesh’s export income and is the largest employer of women, according to the American Journal of Sociological Research.

The majority of women come from villages where employment is scarce and families struggle to survive. Those who stay in rural areas must usually choose between working as farm hands or domestic servants, and so RMG jobs not only offer good wages but can elevate women’s social status.

The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development concluded that, for many women, RMG work was “for all its many problems, was a better way to make money than what one had done in the past.”

Kolpana Akter, from the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity said: “These jobs have also helped in the reduction of forced marriages among young teenagers. The sector is not solely responsible for it, but it has a contribution.”

Akter has constantly campaigned for the safety of these workers and was recently instrumental in getting 31 western retailers, including Zara and H&M to sign a health and safety accord for the protection of garment workers – although Gap and Wal-Mart are among the hold-outs.

She said such work may increase women’s social respectability but their treatment by factory owners or supervisors leaves a dent in their dignity because they are powerless to do complain about conditions for fear of losing their job.

“These women regularly tell me that the retailers have excessive production targets and if the workers cannot meet them then they get verbally and physically abused, like slapping,” Akter said

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Shampa Sonya, 19, who had been working in the doomed factory for 5 years. She lost her husband in the April 24 collapse, and is three months pregnant with no income.

Shampa Sonya, 19, had been working at Rana Plaza for 5 years. A regular paycheck was the only inspiration for her to work in conditions she described as inhumane. Ambitious production targets promised by the factory owners meant that she would start at 8am and finish at 10pm with just an hour’s break in between for lunch. “They wouldn’t even let you go to the toilet unless you had a toilet card, which you had to get from your supervisor, you would get into trouble if you went without one and they would cut your overtime pay if you spent more than five minutes.”

Poor conditions are expected to be tolerated, Sonya said. “The fans were useless and too far away and if we opened the windows all our threads and fabric would fly away, we just dealt with it and got used to it.”

She added: “When the foreign buyers would visit us, there was a totally different atmosphere: they treated us like family, made less people come in to work and targets were much less that day.”

Ferdous Perves Bivon, director of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said it had been lobbying the government since 2003 to improve workplaces.

“If they had listened then all these accidents would not have happened,” Bivon said.

Both Sonya and her husband worked on the same floor of Rana Plaza, stitching jeans. On the day of the collapse, her husband told her to stay at home while he checked on the safety of the building. He never came back.

Now three months pregnant with no work, her husband’s family have taken the compensation money and thrown her out and her mother cannot afford to keep her. 

Related:

PhotoBlog: Ever present danger looms for Bangladeshi workers

PhotoBlog: Bangladesh honors building collapse victims as search for bodies ends

This story was originally published on Sun May 26, 2013 4:43 AM EDT

Charlene Gubash / NBC News

Hany Sayed, 40, and his wife Layla Ali, 30, sit with four of their five children in the two-room windowless shack they were forced to move into after he lost his job as a carpenter's assistant.

CAIRO, Egypt — Egypt’s revolution has not been kind to Hany Sayed and his family. 

When Sayed lost his job as a carpenter’s assistant in the capital six months ago, he, his wife and their five children were forced out of their three-bedroom home and into a two-room shed used to store saddles and tack.

Together the couple earn $143 a month, most of which is spent on food. Still, the children, aged 2 to 13, rarely eat meat or chicken. A doctor at a free clinic told them that the children were calcium and iron deficient and needed extra vitamins, which Sayed said he cannot afford. 

Even the youngest children don’t drink milk, only water and tea, he said.

“Sometimes when we watch them sleep, we just cry,” said the 40-year-old, who now works mucking out stables.  “We see there is no food and we don’t know what to do.”  

Slideshow: Egypt's revolution and the fall of Mubarak

Ahmed Youssef / EPA

Eighteen days of popular protest culminated in the downfall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, 2011.

Launch slideshow

Sayed and his family would be forgiven for expecting better. When the Arab world's most populous country rose up to depose President Hosni Mubarak two years ago, the desire for change went beyond the political – hopes ran high that a new regime would usher in a revitalized economic era.

Protesters that helped bring down the old government adopted the slogan: “Bread, freedom and social justice!”  

So when Mohammed Morsi came to power in June on promises of economic and political reform, as well as and help for the poorest, many thought their lot would improve.

But instead of getting better, the economy has stagnated, the country’s currency lost much of its value and inflation bumped up food prices.

While the government subsidizes basic types of bread, other staples are becoming more expensive: Kidney bean prices grew by nearly 24 percent in the year to March, onions were up 12 percent,  and tomatoes 10.1 percent, according to Egypt Independent newspaper. 

Dr. Nadia Belhaj Hassine, of the International Development Research Centre, a Canadian organization that supports researchers and experts in the developing world, cited a slew of issues that help ensure families like the Sayeds are stuck in crushing poverty. They include the global downturn, regional turmoil and Islamist rhetoric frightening away international investors.

But she also blamed the “huge problem of inexperienced government.”

“They are not aware of what has been done in the past and what should be done,” she said.  “They don’t have any vision about what kind of economic reforms to undertake in the short and long term and how to improve the investment environment.”

Officials at Egypt’s planning and finance ministries did not respond to requests for comment.

Some hope a $4.8-billion International Monetary Fund loan will help stabilize the economy, but the deal has not been signed. Foreign reserves, which were $36 billion in 2011, now stand at $13.5 billion, just enough for three months of such crucial imports as wheat and gas.  

Slideshow: Elections in Egypt

Ahmed Ali / AP

Egypt holds its first elections since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Launch slideshow

Meanwhile, the Egyptian pound has lost 13 percent of its value against the dollar in the past year.  This makes essentials more expensive, which hits families like the Sayeds directly.

Life is difficult, and looks to getting worse for many, according to Gian Pietro Bordignon, World Food Program country director.  

Around a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, with another 20 percent hovering just above it. And while there are no statistics for the period 2012/2013, indications are that malnutrition rates of around 30 percent are also on the increase, he said.

Poverty and malnutrition has visible and long-term effects, he added.

“Without essential nutrients, minerals, vitamins, children cannot grow their brain potential. They have a lower academic performance,” he said. “Malnutrition is not only a personal problem of human suffering but impacts the nation as a whole.” 

It isn’t only meat, milk and new clothes that have disappeared from the Sayeds’ lives. The chance of a better future is also fading: All five children stopped going to school when even the meager expenses needed for free education became too much.  

“I feel sad when I see my friends go to school,” daughter Fatma, 13, said.

Her father has darker thoughts: “Sometimes, I even think of selling my kidney to live.”

Related:

Egyptians fear wave of vigilantism

Egypt's Mubarak ordered back to prison ahead of retrial

Full Egypt coverage from NBC News

Vincent Yu / AP

62-year-old Cheng Man Wai lies in the 16 square foot cage that he calls home, in Hong Kong on Jan. 25, 2013.

By Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

Vincent Yu / AP

A car passes luxury houses on Victoria Peak, Hong Kong's most exclusive neighborhood, on Feb. 7, 2013.

Published at 10:27 a.m. ET: For many of the richest people in Hong Kong, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, home is a mansion with an expansive view from the heights of Victoria Peak. For some of the poorest, like Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage.

The 67-year-old former butcher pays 1,300 Hong Kong dollars ($167) a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.

Vincent Yu / AP

77-year-old Yeung Ying Biu sits inside his cage home on Jan. 25, 2013.

Some 100,000 people in the former British colony live in what's known as inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization, a social welfare group. The category also includes apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks. 

Forced by skyrocketing housing prices to live in cramped, dirty and unsafe conditions, their plight also highlights one of the biggest headaches facing Hong Kong's unpopular Beijing-backed leader: growing public rage over the city's housing crisis. Read the full story.

Vincent Yu / AP

63-year-old Lee Tat-fong walks in a corridor while her two grandchildren -- Amy, 9, and Steven, 13 -- sit in their 50-square-foot room in Hong Kong on Jan. 25, 2013. Lee, like many poor residents, has applied for public housing but faces years of waiting. Nearly three-quarters of 500 low-income families questioned by Oxfam Hong Kong in a recent survey had been on the list for more than 4 years without being offered a flat.

Vincent Yu / AP

77-year-old Yeung Ying Biu eats next to his cage on Jan. 25, 2013. The cage homes date from the 1950s, when they catered mostly to single men coming in from mainland China

Related:

'Coffin' apartments offer wooden box homes for the living

Manila's hidden spaces: Life on the margins in a crowded megacity

Woman leaps to her death as housing disputes surge in China

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

A boy plays on a makeshift swing near a slum area of the Akhdam community where he lives in Yemen's western port city of Houdieda on Oct. 14, 2012.

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

A man from the Akhdam community cooks chicken feet outside his hut in Yemen's western port city of Houdieda on Oct. 16, 2012.

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

Children from the Akhdam community play in a slum area in Sanaa, Yemen, on Oct. 24.

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

A boy stands at the door of his family's hut in a slum area of the Akhdam community in Yemen's western port city of Houdieda on Oct. 14, 2012.

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

Ahlam Salem, 15, moves in an alley in a slum area in Taiz, Yemen on Oct. 11. Ahlam, a member of the Akhdam community, had her legs amputated by surgeons eight years ago to remove malignant tumors.

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

A woman from the Akhdam community holds her son in a slum area in Yemen's southwestern city of Taiz on Oct. 11.

More stories about Yemen on PhotoBlog:

• Angry crowd attacks US Embassy in Yemen
• Funeral for soldiers killed in suspected al Qaeda attacks in Yemen
• Shiite tribesmen denounce US presence in Yemen

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Children and adults scavenge for recyclables and other usable items around a garbage truck at a dump on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

According to 2011 data released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau, 15 percent of individuals in the United States live below the poverty line. While down from 15.1 percent last year, it remains statistically unchanged and near a record high. Today, more than 46 million people live in poverty in America, more than at any point in the country’s history.

However, compared to the poorest countries in the world, the poverty rate in the U.S. is relatively modest. In some countries, the poverty rate is more than five times the U.S. current figures. In Haiti, the highest in the world, 77 percent of residents live in poverty. Based on data from the World Bank, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 countries with the highest poverty rates.

24/7 Wall St.: America's worst companies to work for

The presence of extreme poverty usually coincides with significant obstacles, including limited resources, disease, famine and war. 24/7 Wall St. analyzed how the most impoverished nations ranked in several key areas ranging from level of peace to economic stability, health and education. The poorest countries consistently performed poorly in nearly every case.

Educational attainment and literacy rates are particularly low in these countries. While adult literacy figures were unavailable for many of these nations, those that have reported data were among the worst in the world. In several cases, less than half of eligible children were enrolled in primary education (the equivalent of elementary and middle school). In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among the poorest countries, less than a third of the relevant population was enrolled in primary education. By comparison, in the United States, nearly 95 percent were.

Health and healthy decisions are often ignored in these countries. In the 10 nations with the highest poverty rates, HIV prevalence is extremely high. Five of the eight countries for which data are available were in the top 25 (out of more than 200 countries) for HIV cases among people 15 to 49. These include Zimbabwe, which has the fifth-highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate at 14.3 percent, and Swaziland, which has the highest recorded rate at 25.9 percent. In the U.S., the rate is 0.78 percent.

Life expectancy, not surprising, is also very low. In the U.S., a person born today is projected to live to the age of 78.2. In each of these countries, life expectancy is less than 60 years. In four of these countries, the average resident will not live to see 50.

24/7 Wall St.: 10 brands that will disappear in 2013

24/7 Wall St. relied on World Bank data for the percentage of residents who are living below their national poverty lines. Data were only available for 112 developing nations. In addition, we considered GDP per capita, gross domestic product, HIV/AIDS prevalence, life expectancy, unemployment, infant mortality and primary school enrollment -- all from the World Bank. Where current data were not available, data from the most recent available year were used. We also relied on the U.S. Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook for additional information on these countries, including the presence of armed conflict and recent natural disasters.

These are the poorest countries in the world.

1. Haiti

• Poverty rate: 77 percent
• Population: 10,123,787
• GDP: $7.35 billion (66th lowest)
• GDP per capita: $726 (22nd lowest)

The World Bank notes that more than half of Haiti’s population lives on less than $1 a day, while about 80 percent of the country lives on less than $2 a day. The country’s estimated unemployment rate as of 2010 was 40.6 percent. The impoverished nation is in a state of rebuilding since a devastating earthquake hit the country in 2010. According to a USAID report, the death toll from the earthquake was between 46,000 and 85,000, while the official figure by the Haitian government estimated the death toll at 316,000. The World Bank estimates that damages from earthquake totaled $8 billion, or about 120 percent of gross domestic product.

2. Equatorial Guinea

• Poverty rate: 76.8 percent
• Population: 720,213
• GDP: $19.79 billion (99th lowest)
• GDP per capita: $27,478 (40th highest)

Oddly enough, the country with the second-highest poverty rate in the world has a GDP per capita of $27,478, well above the average worldwide figure of $10,034. However, while extraction of oil and gas has led to economic growth, most of Equatorial Guinea’s population still relies on subsistence farming. The government has been criticized for the mismanagement of its revenue from energy resources. The health and well-being of its citizens would support the critique. Despite its oil wealth, the nation is among the worst countries in the world for life expectancy, at just 50.8 years, and for primary education enrollment, at just 56.3 percent of the relevant population.

3. Zimbabwe

• Poverty rate: 72 percent
• Population: 12,754,378
• GDP: $9.9 billion (72nd lowest)
• GDP per capita: $776 (25th lowest)

Zimbabwe has effectively had one leader, Robert Mugabe, since it became a sovereign nation in 1980. Mugabe’s tenure has been marked by a violent land redistribution program that has harmed agriculture -- a sector that has served as a source of exports and jobs for the nation. Until 2009, Zimbabwe also experienced a problem with hyperinflation. One dollar was worth 9,686.9 Zimbabwean dollars in 2007 and a stunning 430,972.7 Zimbabwean dollars in 2008. In 1993, the nation's poverty rate was just under 35 percent of the population. Since then, the poverty rate has more than doubled to 72 percent.

24/7 Wall St.: States losing the most jobs to China

4. Congo (Democratic Republic)

• Poverty rate: 71.3 percent
• Population: 67,757,577
• GDP: $15.64 billion (91st lowest)
• GDP per capita: $231 (the lowest)

The Congo has suffered from corruption and conflict in the past 15 years that have “dramatically reduced national output and government revenue, increased external debt, and resulted in the deaths of more than 5 million people from violence, famine and disease,” according to the CIA World Factbook. The agency notes that while mining growth has helped boost the country’s economy, much of its economic activity still takes place in the informal sector, which is not counted in GDP statistics. Health and education are very poor in the country. Out of 1,000 children born, 111.7 will die before their first birthday, which is the highest rate in the world except for Sierra Leone. Primary school enrollment of just slightly over 33 percent is the second worst in the world.

5. Swaziland

• Poverty rate: 69.2 percent
• Population: 1,067,773
• GDP: $3.98 billion (47th lowest)
• GDP per capita: $3,725 (82nd lowest)

A number of factors combine to limit Swaziland’s economic growth, including an over-reliance on exports to South Africa. In addition, the country’s workforce is largely concentrated in subsistence agriculture, even though the country faces serious concerns about overgrazing and soil depletion. While these factors harm the nation’s economy, health concerns are likely one of the major factors preventing Swaziland’s population from escaping poverty. Few nations have a lower life expectancy at birth than Swaziland, where the average person is expected to live just 48.3 years. One of the reasons for the low life expectancy is the high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS among those 15 to 49 -- at 25.9 percent it is the highest in the world.

Click here to read the rest of 24/7 Wall St.'s The poorest countries in the world

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

John Harris stands next to his family: wife Remedios (who holds Joshua, 3), Jamie, 11, John, 16, and Joyce, 8, at the small space where they live under a bridge in Manila, Philippines on August 21, 2012 . John is a construction worker making 250 pesos ($6) a day. The family live in a small space under a bridge alongside many other impoverished families.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

Irish Romes, 19, holds her 2-week-old baby Jay at the place where she lives with her family next to a highway in the slums of Binondo, Manila on August 21, 2012.

Manila's population of 20 million people is rising by approximately a quarter of a million every year. Due to overcrowding a third of the Filipino capital's residents are forced to live on any bit of spare land they can manage, often in makeshift settlements under bridges, beside railway lines and even in cemeteries.

Large families are common in a conservative Catholic county that is pushing the government's already weak social care system to its limit.

See more of Getty Images photographer Paula Bronstein's work on population issues in the Philippines in Tuesday's post: Mothers give birth in an already overpopulated Manila.

Look back at PhotoBlog posts on Filipino housing issues and on the world's seven billion population milestone, reached in 2011.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

A boy looks out from his home in a congested slum area of Manila on August 21, 2012.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

A man stands next to the door of his room under a bridge in Manila on August 21, 2012. Families cram into small rooms under a bridge so they can live for free.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

A man washes clothes as children look out from the small room under a bridge within which they live on August 22, 2012 in Manila.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

A woman holds her daughter in their makeshift shack in the Binondo slums of Manila, which they rent for 1,000 pesos ($24) a month.

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A Roma boy climbs on the top of a ramshackle house, torn down by local authorities, in Craica, a shantytown on the outskirts of Baia Mare, Romania. All pictures taken on June 14, 2012 and made available on June 19.

Human rights groups have accused authorities in a Romanian town of violating legislation and trampling on the dignity of Roma gypsy inhabitants by forcibly evicting hundreds of them and relocating them to a chemical plant closed down over pollution concerns. 

Authorities in Baia Mare began moving dozens of families in May from poor neighborhoods where they had lived in 20-year-old improvised buildings with no water, sewage or power supplies.

Amnesty International expressed concern following local media reports that 22 children and 2 adults had become ill after they were rehoused in the former industrial facility.

The vast majority of Romanian Roma live on the margins of society in abject poverty and pro-democracy groups say the state does not do enough to prevent discrimination.

-- Agence France Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

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Roma children play outside a former Cuprom chemical plant turned into a housing project in Baia Mare.

Andrei Pungovschi / AFP - Getty Images

A bulldozer prepares to tear down a ramshackle house in Craica.

Andrei Pungovschi / AFP - Getty Images

A Roma child sits on a couch in Craica.

Andrei Pungovschi / AFP - Getty Images

Roma people go through waste debris looking for useful materials, after several ramshackle houses were torn down by local authorities in Craica.

Andrei Pungovschi / AFP - Getty Images

A Roma man looks on as authorities prepare to tear down houses in Craica.

Andrei Pungovschi / AFP - Getty Images

A Roma child sleeps in a ramshackle house in Craica.

Andrew Biraj / Reuters

A man salvages his belongings after a fire in a slum at Shyamoli in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, on May 16, 2012.

At least 10 people were injured, including a firefighter who sustained burns, and more than 150 shanties were burned down as a blaze swept through a Dhaka slum, Reuters reports. The local fire department said the cause of the blaze had yet to be ascertained.

Bangladeshi photographer Abir Abdullah, who took the photo below, has been documenting the havoc created by Dhaka's frequent fires for several years. He spoke to The New York Times about the project last month.

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Abir Abdullah / EPA

A woman cries holding her child after she lost her shanty house in the fire.

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

Firefighters work to control the blaze.