A new report on poverty and shared prosperity

The World Bank published a new report on the state of poverty in the world. The study says that extreme poverty worldwide continues to fall despite the lethargic state of the global economy. But it warns that given projected growth trends, reducing high inequality may be a necessary component to reaching the world’s goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.  

► Read the report

Key findings

• In 2013, 767 million people, or 10.7 percent of the population, were estimated to be living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per person per day

• Around 100 million people moved out of extreme poverty from 2012 to 2013, and since 1990, nearly 1.1 billion people have escaped extreme poverty (a decline largely fueled by the rapid progress in East Asia and the Pacific and South Asia –specifically in China, Indonesia, and India.

• Extreme poverty remains unacceptably high, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. The region now has the largest number of extreme poor in the world, 389 million, which accounts for half of the total number of extreme poor in the world, and more than all the other regions combined.