This week the World Bank released new data on world poverty, and projects it to fall to a record low of 9.6 percent in 2015. The graph below shows the dramatic decline of global poverty over the past few decades.
Using updated methodology, the World Bank recalculated poverty figures back to 1990. The new data track closely with previous Bank figures, which I use in the graph to show the fall in poverty since the early 1980s when 43 percent of the world’s population was extremely poor. The record on poverty reduction is consistent with the unprecedented progress that humanity has made around the world in the whole range of indicators of well-being, and which researchers and others can explore at HumanProgress.org.
The drop in poverty also coincides with a significant increase in global economic freedom, beginning with China’s reforms some 35 years ago and the globalization that followed the collapse of central planning in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As we celebrate this achievement and strive for further progress, we should not lose sight of the central role that voluntary exchange, freedom of choice, competition and protection of property play in ending privation.
