World poverty reduced by growth in India and China


Larry Elliott in Washington
Monday April 16, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/stor...058103,00.html


Spectacular growth in China and India has pushed the number of people
around the world living on less than a dollar a day below the 1
billion level, but masks entrenched poverty in Africa and Latin
America, the World Bank said yesterday.
Reporting an 80-million drop in extreme poverty in the two years to
2004, the Bank said the improvement was entirely due to the rapid
expansion in Asia's two most populous countries.

It said that since 1990, there had been a 260 million drop in the
number of people living on less than a dollar a day, but this was more
than accounted for by the 300 million taken out of extreme poverty in
China.

In sub-Saharan Africa, extreme poverty had risen by 60 million, the
Bank said, adding that there were now serious doubts about the
region's ability to meet the United Nations goal of halving the number
of people in poverty by 2015.

"The Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of poor
people is still within reach at the worldwide level, with a projected
decline from 29% to 10% between 1990 and 2015," the Bank said in its
annual report, World Development Indicators.

"But many countries will most likely not reach it, particularly those
in sub-Saharan Africa, where average poverty rates remain above 40%,
raising concerns of widening inequalities between regions."

The Bank's data shows that the number of people in extreme poverty has
fallen from 1.489 billion in 1981 to 986 million in 2004. Excluding
China, however, there has been no improvement: the total rose from 855
million in 1981 to 857 million in 2004. Latin America and sub-Saharan
Africa both have more people living on less than a dollar a day than
they did at the start of the 1980s.

The report found that in the past decade growth has not always
guaranteed a reduction in poverty, with poor people failing to reap
the fruits of economic expansion due to a lack of job opportunities,
limited education or bad health.

"Growth is essential to reducing poverty," said the Bank's chief
economist, François Bourguignon. "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 climate. These factors all affect the quality of people's
lives."