Poverty Could Vanish By Early 21st Century

Poverty has fallen faster in the past 50 years than in the previous 50 decades, it says. The optimism, however, is tempered by the perspective of ground reality.

Nearly a third of the developing worlds population about 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day. Over 800 million do not get enough to eat. Nor has the progress been equally distributed with some regions lagging behind others, the report says. The belief that poverty eradication is feasible and affordable is based on three grounds:

Income poverty rates for roughly half the developing world have been reduced by 25 per cent or more in just two decades,

Human poverty rates have been reduced in well over 100 developing countries, and key indicators of human development have advanced strongly over the past few decades, and

By the end of the 20th century, 3-4 billion of the worlds total population of 5.7 billion will have experienced substantial improvements in their standard of living, and about 4-5 billion will have access to basic education and health.

The balance-sheet of poverty in the report indicates that South Asia has the most people affected by poverty while Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have seen the greatest deterioration in the past decade. Three new global pressures creating and recreating poverty violent conflicts, HIV/AIDS and environmental degradation have pushed millions back into poverty in the last 15 years, the report says.

None of these developments was inevitable, and the process can be reversed if countries take more seriously the commitments already made to give poverty reduction a high priority, the report says.