Читать книгу Global Issues - Kristen A. Hite - Страница 29

Which are you – an optimist, or a pessimist? When one thinks about the living standards of the world’s people there are figures that support both positions.

Here’s the optimistic view: on the positive side, the total GDP (gross domestic product) of low‐to‐middle income countries nearly doubled from 2009 to 2017, up from approximately $3.5 trillion to $6.5 trillion.¹⁴ The growth rate of per capita income in developing countries was relatively high in the 1960s and 1970s but stagnated in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, rapid growth began again, especially in East Asia (from Indonesia to South Korea), but a financial crisis in the late 1990s stopped that growth. Overall the decade of the 1990s was one of impressive economic growth for some countries, such as China and India, while other nations became poorer.¹⁵ In the first half of the first decade in the twenty‐first century there was strong economic growth in much of the world that reduced the number of people living in extreme poverty from 1.8 billion in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2005.¹⁶ Note that the international standard for extreme poverty is based on the number of people below a daily income threshold: less than $1.25 a day until 2015, and then $1.90 after that.

This improvement ended with the very serious economic crisis that occurred in the United States and spread to Europe and many other countries in 2008–2009. The crisis led to abrupt declines in exports from resource rich yet economically poor countries and a lowering of the prices they received for their commodities (mainly minerals and agricultural products). Trade and foreign investments declined. The World Bank estimates the crisis left an additional 50 million people in extreme poverty in 2009.¹⁷

Despite the global financial hardship, in 2010, the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of reducing global poverty by one‐half of the 1990 poverty level was achieved.¹⁸ Figure 2.1 shows the overall reduction in extreme poverty in developing countries during the final decades of the twentieth century.

Figure 2.1 Global extreme poverty rate, 1980–2000

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2005.

Table 2.1 gives a closer look at the progress made from 2013 to 2015 in reducing the number of people in poor countries living in extreme poverty, i.e. living daily on $1.90 or less. In the last 25 years, based on daily income statistics, one billion fewer people are living in extreme poverty, and by 2018, the global poverty rate was at its lowest historic levels, according to World Bank president Jim Kim.¹⁹

Table 2.1 Global extreme poverty rate

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2018.

Poverty at the International Poverty Line of $1.90/day (in 2011 purchasing power parity)
Region	Headcount ratio (%)	No. poor (millions)
2013	2015	2013	2015
East Asia and Pacific	3.6	2.3	73.1	47.2
Europe and Central Asia	1.6	1.5	7.7	7.1
Latin America and the Caribbean	4.6	4.1	28.0	25.9
Middle East and North Africa	2.6	5.0	9.5	18.6
South Asia	16.2	12.4	274.5	216.4
Sub‐Saharan Africa	42.5	41.1	405.1	413.3
World Total	11.2	10.0	804.2	735.9

Note that much of that progress took place in East Asia and South Asia, where China and India are located. By their sheer population size, overall increases in income of the poorest people in these two countries has significantly improved the global poverty rate. The impressive economic growth that both nations experienced in the late twentieth century, especially China, came after they introduced new economic policies that spurred foreign investments. At the beginning of the 1980s, China was one of the poorest countries in the world with about 60 percent of its people living in extreme poverty. Between 1981 and 2012, China more than halved the number of people living on less than $1.25 per day (reduced by 660 million).²⁰ Poverty rates fell from 51 percent in 1990 to about 24 percent in 2015.²¹ By 2017, the rate of extreme poverty (people living on less than $1.90) in China had fallen dramatically: down to 0.7 percent of the population.²² The unprecedented reduction of extreme poverty in China and India are shown in Figures 2.2 and 2.3 respectively. Figure 2.4 demonstrates the global trend in poverty reduction.

Overall, the global growth in wealth last century corresponded to marked increases in well‐being, as illustrated in this excerpt from a report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):

Progress in human development during the twentieth century was dramatic and unprecedented. Between 1960 and 2000 life expectancy in developing countries increased from 46 to 63 years. Mortality rates for children under five were more than halved. Between 1975, when one of every two adults could not read, and 2000 the share of illiterate people was almost halved. Real per capita incomes more than doubled from $2,000 to $4,200.²³

Figure 2.2 Poverty trend (by International Standards: $1.90 USD): China

Source: World Bank, Poverty and Equity Database and PovcalNnet, 2018.

Figure 2.3 Poverty trend (by International Standards: $1.90 USD): India

Source: World Bank, Poverty and Equity Database and PovcalNet, 2018.

Figure 2.4 Percent of the global population living in poverty on less than $1.90 USD a day: International Poverty Line ($1.90)

Source: World Bank, Poverty and Equity Database and Povcalanet, 2018.