Global Extreme Poverty is Declining

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a steady decline in both the worldwide poverty rate and the total number of extreme poor. In 1990, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty was 43.1%, but in 2010, that percentage had dropped down to 20.6%. This halving of the extreme poverty rate falls in line with the first millennium development goal (MDG1) proposed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called on the international community at the turn of the century to “halv[e] the proportion of people living in extreme poverty…by 2015.”:

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty)