Development Strategies and Poverty Reduction

Abstract

Globalization brings the suffering of the world’s poor directly to the attention of those fortunate to have been born non‐poor in high‐income countries. And there is plenty of suffering. In 2004, an estimated 969 million people – more than 18% of the world’s population – lived on less than roughly $1/day per person and were thus classified as “extremely poor” by global standards (Chen and Ravallion 2007). Indeed, outside of China, the developing world has not enjoyed any sustained progress over the past quarter century in reducing the number of extremely poor people. Meanwhile, in some regions the number of extremely poor people has increased significantly. In sub‐Saharan Africa, even in the face of population growth, the extreme poor have consistently accounted for 41‐48 percent of the sub‐continent’s residents since good estimates began around 1980. For