The Asian ‘Poverty Miracle’: Impressive Accomplishments or Incomplete Achievements?

Abstract

As a consequence of the rapid economic growth in recent decades, Asia and the Pacific have experienced an impressive reduction in extreme poverty, when measured at the conventional $1.25/day/person poverty line. Whereas in 1981, 1.59 billion Asians were poor (corresponding to a poverty rate of 69.8 percent), in 1990 the number of poor in Asia had fallen to 1.48 billion (a 54.7 percent poverty rate). In fact, by 2005, Asia had succeeded in halving its extreme poverty because its 26.9 percent poverty rate was already less than half the 1990 level and, by 2010, the extreme poverty rate reduced further to 20.7 percent