A latest World Bank report has announced that India accounted for the largest number of poor people in any country in 2012, but its poverty rate was lowest among countries having large number of poor population.
Based on the report, the number of people living in extreme poverty around the world is likely to fall to under 10 per cent of the global population by this year.
This reveals that the world is moving closer to its mission of ending poverty by 2030. The poverty rate in low-income countries was on an average of 43% in 2012, while in middle-income-countries, it was 19%. The lower-middle-income countries are home to about half of the global poor as compared to a third for low-income countries.
Four nations (China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria) with the largest populations were once classified as low-income but now they have moved into lower-middle-income category.
The world bank president Jim Yong Kim pointed out the reasons for The major reductions in poverty .They are strong growth rates in developing countries, investment in people’s education, health and social safety nets that helped people from falling back into poverty.
The regional forecast for 2015 shows that the poverty in East Asia and the Pacific would fall to 4.1% of its population, down from 7.2% in 2012; Latin America and the Caribbean would fall to 5.6% from 6.2% in 2012.In South Asia, the poverty would scale down to 13.5% in 2015 as against 18.8% in 2012; sub-Saharan Africa poverty would decline to 35.2% in 2015 as compared to 42.6% in 2012.
World Bank president – Jim Yong Kim