According to the UNDP Human Development Trends report, around 19% of the world’s population was living in “poverty” in the year 2000, with an income below US$1 per day. According to current trends, the world is on track to meet Millennium Development Goal of reducing the precentage of people living in poverty to below 15% by 2015.
However, this improvement arises largely because of improvements in Asia. At present, the position is not improving in Africa. In 1970, 86% of the people living in poverty in the world were in Asia, 3% in Latin America, and 11% in Africa. In 2000, 60% of the people living in poverty were in Asia, 35% in Africa and 4% in Latin America. If current trends continue, by 2015, 68% of people living in poverty will be in Africa, 25% in Asia and 5% in Latin America.
One of the problems of the definition of “poverty” used by this analysis is that the bar has been set at a very low level. If the Australian poverty line was used as the basis for the analysis, then more than 85% of the people in the world would be living in poverty. Poverty isn’t something that will be “made history” anytime soon. It’s something that requires long-term systematic attention from those in the world who have an income significantly exceeding $1 per day.