Nearly half the world lives on less than $7.60 a day: World Bank
WASHINGTON: Despite progress in reducing extreme poverty, nearly half the world's population lives on less than US$5.50 (S$7.60) a day, the World Bank said yesterday.
In a twice-yearly report, the bank took a broader look to see where countries were lagging, even though the share of those living in extreme poverty - defined as earning less than US$1.90 a day - has continued to come down in recent years.
Under the expanded criteria for poverty, the report found the number of poor was still "unacceptably high", while the fruits of economic growth were "shared unevenly across regions and countries".
However, the total count of people in poverty declined by more than 68 million people between 2013 and 2015.
Despite the improvement, the report said current trends indicated that the World Bank's goal of reducing extreme poverty to less than 3 per cent of the world's population by 2030 may be unattainable.
"Particularly distressing findings are that extreme poverty is becoming entrenched in a handful of countries and the pace of poverty reduction will soon decelerate significantly," it said.
At the $5.50-a-day threshold, poverty fell to 46 per cent from 67 per cent between 1990 and 2015. The bank reported last month that extreme poverty had fallen to 10 per cent in 2015.
With China's rise, East Asia and the Pacific saw a 60 point drop in the poverty rate to 35 per cent. Poverty is becoming entrenched in sub-Saharan Africa, where 84.5 per cent of the population live on less than $5.50 a day, the report said.
The World Bank also cautioned that in many of those countries, the poor were not sharing equally in economic growth. - AFP
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