Article content continued

And the transformation has almost nothing to do with debt relief or higher aid flows.

According to the Brookings report, Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from 2005 to 2015

, we are living in a period of rapid global poverty reduction that is driven by high, sustained economic growth across the developing world.

Nearly half a billion people escaped living at or below the poverty threshold of US$1.25-a-day between 2005 and 2010, say the study’s authors Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz.

“Never before in history have so many people been lifted out of poverty in such a short period,” they said.

The change, driven by the highest levels of sustained economic growth recorded in the developing world, has been so dramatic that the United Nations Millennium Development Goal to halve the rate of global poverty between 1990 and 2015 was probably already achieved by 2008 — seven years ahead of schedule, the Brooking report says.

“A lot has changed in the past six years,” the study says. “The economies of the developing world have expanded 50% in real terms, despite the Great Recession. Moreover, growth has been particularly high in countries with large numbers of poor people. India and China, of course, but also Bangladesh, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Uganda, Mozambique and Uzbekistan — nine countries that were collectively home to nearly two-thirds of the world’s poor in 2005 — are all experiencing phenomenal economic advances.”