Poverty Statistics

"According to the World Bank, the number of people living on less than $1 a day fell in 2004 to 986m, or 18.4% of the population of developing countries. There were also fewer people on less than $2 a day, but still 2.6 billion, or almost half the developing world's population. The bank says that annual average growth of 3.9% in GDP per person since 2000 has helped cut poverty rates in all developing regions. The most striking reduction in extreme poverty has been in China, where 374m people (33% of the population) were on less than $1 a day in 1990. By 2004 the figure was 128m (9.9%). In sub-Saharan Africa the extreme poverty rate fell only from 46.7% to 41.1%—and the number of poor rose, from 240m to 298m"- The Economist