Eradication of extreme poverty: most recent global scenario

Eradication of extreme poverty: most recent global scenario

Poverty is a mirror that reflects the miseries of deprived people who have to struggle with hunger to survive. It's also considered as a big and difficult problem by both developed and developing countries. Different types of projects and strategies are taken to eradicate poverty, especially extreme poverty.
In 2008, World Bank (WB) announced the new poverty line of $1.25 a day to measure the number of poor population, which was $1 a day previously. It is estimated that 1.4 billion people live at this new poverty line or below it while this figure was 984 million with $1 a day in 2004.
Table-1: population in poverty

Poverty line ($ a day)	Population in poverty (bill)	Pop above poverty (bill)	% in poverty
$1.00	0.88	5.58	13.6
$1.25	1.40	5.06	21.7
$2.00	2.60	3.86	40.2
$10.00	5.15	1.31	79.7

Source: World Bank Development Indicators 2008
Between 1981 and 2005, the world poverty rate has fallen by about 25%, which has regional variation in this success. For instance, much of the poverty reduction exclusively comes from china, because its poverty rate fell from 85% to 15.9% or by over 600 million people at the same period of time. Excluding China, world poverty fell only by around 10%. Regional poverty reduction scenario will be clear from the following table. Table-2: Poverty by region (%)

Region	1990	2004	2015*
East Asia & Pacific	15.40	9.07	3.04
Europe & Central Asia	3.60	0.95	0.32
Latin America & the Caribbean	9.62	8.64	7.00
Middle East & North Africa	2.08	1.47	4.00
South Asia	35.04	30.84	34.61
Sub-Saharan Africa	46.07	41.09	54.5

*Projected by World Bank staff estimates
Poverty is declining in absolute term but increasing in relative term respectively. Income inequality is a relative measure of poverty which is appallingly high at almost every region of the world. Among six regions, poverty is currently concentrated and shifting towards South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa but it is most severe in Sub-Saharan Africa. Income poverty is very high at almost all regions but severe in Latin America & the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa.
It should be noted that the poverty gap tends to be worse in sub-Saharan Africa than in South Asia. Proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day is 51 % in Sub-Saharan Africa and 39 % in South Asia in 2005 (MDG report-2010) of world population.
Furthermore, in the south Asian countries, at $1 poverty is very high in India (34.3 %) and Bangladesh (41.3 %) whereas in sub-Saharan Africa, it is 70.8 % in Nigeria, and 63.8 % in Zambia.

Table-3: Inequality through income distribution (1990-2005)*

Region	Poorest 20%	Richest 20 %
East Asia & Pacific	5.2	48.5
Europe & Central Asia	6.6	41.1
Latin America & the Caribbean	2.9	57.1
Middle East & North Africa	5.1	49.8
South Asia	8.7	41.7
Sub-Saharan Africa	9.6	64.5
High-income countries	5.9	45.6

*Information available
Source: World Bank Development Indicators 2008
According to the World Bank staff estimates, based on current trends, about 624 million (0.6 billion) people would be living in extreme poverty in 2015 while 90 % of them would be living in South Asia (216 mill) and Sub-Saharan Africa (340 mill).
Poverty means unhappiness, powerlessness and deprivation from all types of basic needs. Poor people are none but our neighbours. Government of every country and the development agencies of the world should take initiative to eradicate extreme poverty. Otherwise, this world would be a hell instead of a peaceful living place.