Global Extreme Poverty Cut in Half over 20 Years

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The share of people living in extreme poverty around the world continued to decline in recent years despite financial crises and surging food prices, the World Bank said today.

The bank said preliminary estimates for 2010 showed that the world’s extreme poverty rate — people living below $1.25 a day — had fallen to less than half of its 1990 value. That meets the first Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty from its 1990 level, before its 2015 deadline, the Washington-based development institution said.

For 2008, the latest year with full global data available, about 1.29 billion — roughly 22% of the developing world’s population — lived below $1.25 a day. In 1981, 1.94 billion people lived in extreme poverty. The bank’s latest figures are based on more than 850 household surveys in about 130 countries. The region with the highest extreme poverty rate was Sub-Saharan Africa, where about 47% lived below $1.25 a day.

The $1.25 marker for extreme poverty is the average for the poorest 10 to 20 nations of the world. The median poverty line for developing countries — $2 a day — showed less progress, the bank said. The number of people living below $2 per day fell to 2.47 billion in 2008 from 2.59 billion in 1981, though it has fallen more sharply since 1999.

World’s Extreme Poverty Cut in Half Since 1990 - Real Time Economics - WSJ