China leads the world in driving poverty reduction
Print Edition
CHINA’S success in reducing poverty has driven poverty reduction globally, and it could set an example for the rest of the world to end extreme poverty, a senior World Bank official has said.
“Much of the success in poverty reduction globally has actually been driven by China’s incredible success in reducing poverty,” Ana Revenga, senior director on poverty and quality at the World Bank, said during a teleconference on its Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 report.
The report showed that nearly 800 million people lived on less than US$1.9 a day in 2013. That is around 100 million fewer extremely poor people than in 2012.
From 1990 to 2013, the extremely poor fell from 35 percent of the world’s population to just under 11 percent.
The progress on extreme poverty was driven mainly by East Asia and Pacific, especially China, Indonesia and India, said the report.
Despite the good news “there is no room for complacency,” said Francisco Ferreira, senior adviser to the World Bank’s Development Research Group.
The report showed half of the world’s extreme poor live in Sub-Saharan African and another third in South Asia.
“The pockets of poverty that remain will become increasingly harder to reach and address,” said Ferreira.
The report forecast that the world would be unable to achieve the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, even under optimistic scenarios for growth with no change in inequality. The World Bank set a target of reducing the poverty headcount ratio from 12.4 percent globally in 2012 to 3 percent by 2030.
China has been a lesson to the rest of the world on how to tackle extreme poverty, said Revenga. “If anybody can show the world how to go that last mile, it probably is China,” she said.
The report also found that in 34 of 83 countries monitored, income gaps widened as incomes grew faster for the wealthiest 60 percent than among the bottom 40 percent, despite inequality falling in many places since 2008.
The World Bank called on countries to adopt policies, such as early childhood education, universal health coverage, universal access to education, rural infrastructure construction, progressive taxation and cash transfers to poor families, in order to create growth and enable the poorest to take advantage of opportunities.
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