The World Bank Forecasts Global Poverty to Fall Below 10% for First Time (…)
The number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty is likely to fall below the ten percent of the total world population. That is what the World Bank predicts and announced at its annual meeting last week in Lima, Peru. The report shows that the 25-year-long efforts bring the world closer to the goal of poverty to a halt by 2030.In 2012, 12.8 percent of the total world population (902 million people), lived in poverty, for ‘only’ 702 million this year.
Never before has the World Bank saw this number under the ten percent threshold. In fact, in order to take account of the inflation, the World Bank has increased the poverty line from US$1.25 to US$1.90 per day. This new poverty line takes into account new information about the difference in cost of living in different countries, but does retain the real purchasing power of the previous poverty line of US$1.25.
However, the situation in sub-Saharan Desert remains ‘extremely worrying’: it drops the number of 42.6 percent in 2012 to 35.2 percent this year. The Maghreb and the Middle East, says the World Bank, do not have reliable data because of the many conflicts there.
The decrease is primarily due to strong growth in developing countries in Asia, such as India and Latin America. That said the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, who spoke of “the best story in the world today”.
In April 2013, nine months after Kim became president, the World Bank focused on the goal to eliminate global poverty by 2030 and to increase global prosperity by increasing the incomes of the lowest 40 percent of the population. “This new prediction (…) should help us sharpen focus on the most effective strategies in extreme poverty to halting” Kim said. “It will be extremely difficult, especially in a period of slower global growth and volatile financial markets, conflict, high unemployment among the youth and the growing impact of climate change. But it remains attainable, as long as our high expectations match the plan to help the millions of people still live in extreme poverty.”
