Global poverty rates continued to fall in the first four years
of this century, according to new estimates published in the World
Development Indicators 2007, which is released on Monday.
The proportion of people living on less than US$1 a day fell to
18.4 percent in 2004, leaving an estimated 985 million people
living in extreme poverty. In 1990, the total number of extreme
poor was 1.25 billion. Two-dollar-a-day poverty rates are falling
too, but an estimated 2.6 billion people, almost half the
population of the developing world, were still living below that
level in 2004.
Developing countries have averaged a solid 3.9 percent annual
growth in GDP per capita since 2000, which contributed to rapidly
falling poverty rates in all developing regions over the past few
years. Another key reason dollar-a-day poverty fell by over 260
million between 1990 and 2004 was China's massive poverty reduction
over that period. Indeed, East Asia's extreme poverty rate dropped
to 9 percent in 2004.
In the rest of the developing world, good economic performance
and a lower poverty incidence in most regions have offset a rise in
the sheer numbers of poor people that might have otherwise
accompanied population growth. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 298 million
people were living in extreme poverty in 2004, practically the same
number as in 1999, whereas the number of poor had increased
continuously in the previous two decades.
The report finds that, in the past decade, poverty reduction was
not always or everywhere commensurate with income growth. In some
countries and regions, inequality worsened, as poor people did not
reap the fruits of economic expansion, because of a lack of job
opportunities, limited education or bad health.
"Growth is essential to reducing poverty, but it isn't the only
factor.? The World Development Indicators go beyond growth and
poverty rates to ask how income is distributed, whether health care
and education are improving, and to assess the business
environment. These factors all affect the quality of people's
lives," said Fran?ois Bourguignon, World Bank Chief Economist and
Senior Vice President for Development Economics.
World Development Indicators 2007 (WDI) provides a detailed
picture of the world through data. It includes information on
health expenditures, transport, infrastructure services, quality of
public sector management, internet access, access to improved water
sources, and carbon dioxide emissions.
This 11th edition of the WDI looks at countries that have done
unusually well over the past decade. It finds strong performers in
all regions, with notably fast growth in GDP per capita among many
states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But it also
finds that the countries with the highest rates of under-5
mortality a decade ago have, on average, made the slowest reduction
in mortality.
"These results are worrying," says Alan Gelb, Director of
Development Policy, "The fact that under-five mortality is 15 times
higher in low income countries than in wealthy ones is a stark
example of how far we still need to go ."
(China.org.cn April 16, 2007)