It is believed that the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), reduction of global poverty rate by half by the year 2015 has already been achieved three years ago! Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz, in the new Brookings Institution report "Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from 2005 to 2015", came up with this great news. The data that 1.37 billion people around the world are poor including India's share of 456 million and China's share of 208 million was produced in 2005 by the World Bank. Since then a lot has changed. Despite the global recession the economies of the developing world have expanded 50% in real terms. Countries that collectively hold two-thirds of the world's poor in 2005 are now experiencing phenomenal economic growth.
Chandy and Gertz estimated that between 2005 and 2010, almost half a billion people escaped extreme poverty around the world, and total number of world's poor people fell from 1.37 billion to 878 million. As this target was achieved by 2008, seven years before the target year, the writers are predicting a new target by using forecasts of per capita consumption growth, reduction of global poverty to less than 600 million.
Among the world regions, Asia is showing the greatest success so far. It is expected that by 2015, Asia's share of global poverty will reduce to one-third from two-thirds. On the other hand, Africa's share will go up by nearly 60%. But this is not the end. It is estimated that Africa's poverty rate in 2008 dropped below 50% for the first time in history and by 2015 it will drop below 40%.
This study shows us real hope that eradication of global poverty is no longer a dream. The researchers suggest that we should celebrate this success and take it as an incentive to design more appropriate policies to eradicate global poverty.
-Nisha Noor
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