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A World Bank report offers rare good news on global poverty.
According to World Bank estimates released on Feb. 29, in every region of the developing world the percentage of extreme poverty, people living on less than $1.25 a day, and the total number of global poor declined between 2005 and 2008.
World Bank researchers add that despite the recent global economic crisis and associated spikes in commodity and food costs since 2008, recent analysis reveals that global poverty overall kept falling through 2010.
In fact, preliminary estimates for 2010 indicate that the $1.25-a-day poverty rate had fallen to under half of its 1990 value by 2010. This would mean that the first U.N. Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty from its 1990 level has been achieved before the 2015 deadline.
An estimated 1.29 billion people in 2008 lived below $1.25 a day, equivalent to 22 percent of the population of the developing world. By contrast, 1.94 billion people were living in extreme poverty in 1981.
So are the improving poverty figures cause for universal celebration?
Not so fast, say some global development analysts. Paul Miller, a foreign aid advisor for Catholic Relief Services, said the numbers overall offered good news, but the problem of poverty “hasn’t improved enough that the commitments made for the developing world should let up.
“Some of these ‘victories,'” he said, “are quite tentative.” And Miller is skeptical that the World Bank’s post-2008 numbers can be trusted.
Continue reading: Are we winning the fight against global poverty?
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