Huge Drop in Poverty Comes with Rising Inequality

Today the UN released its 2007 Millennium Development Goals Report, the annual statistical survey of the global and regional progress towards fulfilling the Development Goals. According to the report,

There has been significant progress toward the target of halving extreme poverty by 2015... The proportion of people worldwide living on the equivalent of a dollar a day has dropped from 32% (1.25 billion in 1990) to 19% (980 million in 2004). The greatest gain was in Eastern Asia, where the proportion of people living in extreme poverty fell from 33% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2004.

However, this accomplishment in poverty reduction has been accompanied by rapidly increasing inequality across regions. For example, in Eastern Asia, the share of consumption of the poorest fifth of the population dropped from 7.3% in 1990 to 4.5% in 2004.

To read the press release, click here. To read the full report, click here.