Global poverty rates continue to fall: Report

from Zee News

Washington, April 16: Global poverty rates have continued to fall in the first four years of the 21st century according to new estimates published in the World Development Indicators 2007 with the proportion of people living on less than USD 1 a day falling to 18.4 per cent in 2004, leaving an estimated 985 million people living in extreme poverty.

India's share of poorest quintile in national consumption is placed at 8.9 per cent between 1993 and 2005 with underweight percentage of children under the age of five placed at 53 per cent between 1990 and 1995 with statistics unavailable for 2005.

The total number of extreme poor across the globe was 1.25 billion in 1990. Two-dollar-a-day poverty rates are falling too, but an estimated 2.6 billion people, almost half the population of the developing world, were still living below that level in 2004.

The development indicators for 2007 have sought to highlight the progress that has been made - or lack thereof - in such areas as poverty and hunger, primary education, infant mortality, gender equality and maternal health. The comparisons have been drawn between 1990 and 1995 to between 2000 and 2005.

But in the real of achieving universal primary education, India has jumped from 68 per cent in 1991 in primary completion rate to 89 per cent in 2005 and in the promotion of gender equality from 69 per cent in 1991 to 87 per cent in 2005. Gender equality is measured in the ratio of male to female enrollments in primary and secondary schools.