World Bank: Global poverty falls below 10% of world's population
Living on or below US$1.25 (AU$1.77) a day has been used to measure extreme poverty since 2008. The World Bank, however, has reset the benchmark and adjusted it to US$1.90 (AU$2.68) a day. The change in benchmark reflects new data in the cost of living expenses across different countries while at the same time reflecting the purchasing power of the previous measurement.
The World Bank’s latest projections expect a number of people living in extreme poverty to drop from 12.8 percent of the 2012 global population to 9.6 percent in 2015. This means that a projected 702 million people will be living in extreme poverty this year.
World Bank president Jim Yong Kim described the reduction of extreme global poverty as“the best story in the world today.”
Kim attributed the strong economic growth rates in emerging markets, as well as increasing investments in education, health and social safety, to the reduction of extreme poverty. However, the World Bank president also warned about obstacles that can hinder attaining the UN target to end poverty by 2030. Among these obstacles are slower global growth, volatile financial markets, conflicts, high youth underemployment and the impact of climate change.
Ending poverty by 2030 is part of the new development goals set by the UN last month, which was adopted by its 193 member countries.
Despite the decline, the number of people living in extreme poverty has not reduced, especially in regions that are exposed to conflict or dependent to commodity exports like Sub-Saharan Africa, explains the World Bank. The region accounts to 15 percent of global poverty in 1990 but has now increased to half. The people living in poverty continues to grow because the rate in which poverty is declining is less than the rate in which population is increasing, according to Laurence Chandy, a fellow at the Brookings Institution whose research focuses on global poverty. He also pointed out the flawed data-collecting practices and the mismatch of information on where the poor are in Africa and where growth is occurring.
Since the global poverty line was introduced in 1990, the poverty line has dropped more than half. In 2015, only 836 million people lived under a US$1.25/day (AU$1.77/day) compared to 1.9 billion in 1990. This follows the 2000 Millennium Development Goals in which eradication of extreme poverty was among the goals to be achieved.
A new set of Sustainable Development Goals, comprising of 17 goals to combat poverty, inequality and climate change, with ending extreme poverty as the main objective, is hoped to be achieved by 2030.
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