Economy
We're So Close to Alleviating Global Poverty, and Yet So Far
The world’s extremely poor population will drop below 10 percent this year, but some areas are still struggling.
For the first time ever, the share of the world’s population that’s extremely poor will be in the single digits, the World Bank estimates. In 2012, 12.8 percent of the world’s population was below the new international poverty line of $1.90 per day. But this year, the number of people earning below that threshold is down to 702 million—9.6 percent of the global population.
“This is the best story in the world today,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a press release. “These projections show us that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty.”