Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger | 9
The world has made remarkable progress in reducing extreme poverty. In 1990, close to half of the people in developing regions lived on less than $1.25 a day. This rate dropped to 22 per cent by 2010. This means that the world reached the MDG target—of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty—five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. Meantime, the absolute number of people living in extreme poverty fell from
1.9 billion in 1990 to 1.2 billion in 2010. Despite this overall achievement, progress on poverty reduction has been uneven. Some regions, such as Eastern Asia and SouthEastern Asia, have met the target of halving the extreme poverty rate, whereas other regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, still lag behind. According to World Bank projections, sub-Saharan Africa will be unlikely to meet the target by 2015.
The majority of the extreme poor live in a few countries Top five countries with the largest share of the global extreme poor, 2010 (Percentage)
32.9%
India China
35.5%
12.8% 8.9%
4.6% 5.3%
Nigeria Bangladesh Congo, Democratic Republic
The overwhelming majority of people living on less than $1.25 a day belong to two regions: Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In 2010, one third of the world’s 1.2 billion extreme poor lived in India alone. China, despite much progress in poverty reduction, ranked second, and was home to about 13 per cent of the global extreme poor. Nigeria (9 per cent), Bangladesh (5 per cent) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5 per cent) followed. Nearly two thirds of the extreme poor lived in those five countries in 2010. Aside from those populous countries with large numbers of the extreme poor, high poverty rates are often found in small, fragile and conflict-affected countries. However, such countries often lack frequent, quality household surveys that could capture details on income or consumption, thus hampering efforts to design and implement appropriate policies and programmes that will tackle poverty.
Other countries
32.9%
35.5%
4.6%
12.8% 8.9%
5.3%
India
32.9%
China
12.8%
Nigeria
8.9%
Bangladesh
5.3%
Congo, Democratic Republic Remaining countries
4.6% 35.5%