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Anti-Poverty Advances Uneven

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The Associated Press

Published: November 7, 2007

BEIJING - The world's poorest people are not seeing the benefits of a global poverty rate decline driven by Asia's economic growth over the past two decades, a report released today said.

The report by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute said the world is on track to reach a U.N. target of halving poverty and hunger by 2015.

Yet, those living on less than 50 cents a day - what the institute called the "ultra poor" - have benefited the least from poverty reduction efforts, the report said.

It estimated 162 million people fall into the poorest category in 2004 while some 838 million lived on between 50 cents and $1. Three-quarters of the world's poorest live in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.
East Asia and the Pacific region saw a 20 percentage-point drop between 1990 and 2004 in the number of people living in extreme poverty.

The U.N.-sponsored Millennium Development Goals defines extreme poverty as people living on less than a $1 a day.
Poverty rates in sub-Saharan Africa have stagnated from 1990 to 2004, the last year for which data were collected for the survey. Civil conflict, bad infrastructure and a lack of education have hampered growth in that region.

"In sub-Saharan Africa, most of those defined as hungry live in ultra hunger and are at risk of dying from extreme hunger or starvation," said an executive summary of the report, "The World's Most Deprived, Characteristics and Causes of Extreme Poverty and Hunger."

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