World Poverty Seen Falling Sharply But Only Patchily (UN Millennium Development Goals report)

[pampango]

Source: Manila Bulletin

The share of the population of developing regions whose people live in extreme poverty is expected to fall to 15 percent by 2015, down from 46 percent in 1990, according to the United Nations. The gains stem largely from robust economic growth in countries such as China and India, the world’s two most populous countries.

As leaders will hear next week at a U.N. summit in New York, the overall success in cutting extreme poverty is patchy from region to region. According to the World Bank, much of Asia already has met or is on its way to meeting the goal, and Latin America is on track to more than halve its rate from 11 percent in 1990 to 5 percent in 2015; sub-Saharan Africa is likely to fall short at a projected 38 percent. It was 58 percent in 1990.

In China, whose economy this year officially surpassed Japan's as the world's second largest, the number living below the international poverty line fell from 60.2 percent in 1990 to 15.9 percent in 2005. By 2015, it is forecast to be 5 percent.

India has not been as successful, but the United Nations says it is nonetheless on track to cut its poverty rate from 51 percent in 1990 to 24 percent in 2015. India’s economy grew 8.8 percent in the second quarter of this year.

Read more: http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/277648/world-poverty-seen-falling-sharply-but-only-patchily

---

The Millennium Development Goals report is at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202010%20En%20r15%20-low%20res%2020100615%20-.pdf

[Hannah Bell]

1. hmmm.

[Lucky Luciano]

2. global wealth redistribution from the American middle class. nt

[pampango]

3. But not from the European middle class which may say more about how we structure our society

than anything else. The redistribution of wealth to the poor countries is a good thing. How rich societies decide whose pocket the wealth comes out of is a domestic matter.

[MellowDem]

6. I would say most of it is just wealth creation...

There isn't a finite amout of wealth that just keeps getting spread from one part of the world to the other. The amount of wealth changes, and in many of the developing nations, there is a lot of potential for the rapid growth of production and wealth, given the right policies.

[Lucky Luciano]

7. Real wealth is created by technological innovation.

China and India provide very little for technological innovation. They do, however set up a perfect opportunity for labor arbitrage through the outsourcing service sector jobs that can be commoditized. Many of the victims have indeed been from the American middle class manufacturing and IT sectors. As such, the poor, but educated in India have been lifted up by taking jobs that pay much more than before, but take from jobs in America - hence the wealth transfer from the American middle class. China has done the same thing as India, but in the manufacturing sector. All of this has been at the expense of the American middle class.

My suggestion to people that are in industries where what they do can be commoditized as such is to aggressively get ahead of the curve, be innovative, and do real things (ie things that increase revenue that only YOU can do) that cannot be outsourced. You need to make a mark for yourself or you will be the next victim. Not saying this is right or that it does not increase the stress levels ten fold...just stating reality.

[awoke_in_2003]

4. and it is rising here...

and NOTHING is being done about it, because war is more important.

[JDPriestly]

5. Poverty rises in the US and declines in the third world.

It's great to hear that poverty is declining outside the US.

A lot of that is because of the free trade policies of our government.

Problem is that when those policies were introduced, no one stopped to think that they would need to evenly distribute the gains from those policies.

Fact is, a lot of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes, and the outsourcing of jobs, moving of entire factories overseas and purchasing virtually all consumer products that require manufacture from some other country means economic and social upheaval in the US.

And there is no measure and has been no effort to find a measure to distribute the losses here and the misery here across the economic and social strata. Free trade is not working for America.