From 66% to Near Zero in 30 Years: Ten Countries Proved That Extreme Poverty Can Be Defeated.

Ten countries cut their extreme poverty rates by 13 to 67 percentage points since 1990, together lifting an estimated 1.5 billion people above the poverty line. Vietnam dropped from 69% to 2% in three decades, the steepest sustained national poverty reduction in recorded history.

• East Asia dominates the deepest reductions – China (-66.2%), Vietnam (-67%), and Indonesia (-56.1&) achieved the fastest, largest poverty drops, primarily through export-led industrialisation and urbanisation.
• Africa and South Asia show it is replicable – Ethiopia (-40.7%), Rwanda (-42.4%), Bangladesh (-53.5%), and India (-35%) prove rapid reduction is achievable across very different starting conditions, from post-genocide reconstruction to garment-export growth.
• Social programmes matter as much as growth – Brazil’s Bolsa Família and Peru’s poverty programmes delivered -13.6% and -17.1% reductions in middle-income economies, showing targeted transfers work even where broad industrialisation isn’t the driver.

Of 126 countries assessed, just 8 (only 6%) are classified in the Critical or Severe tier, yet their populations number in the hundreds of millions and their food insecurity rates range from 30% to 63%, representing the most acute humanitarian food emergency on earth today.

Sub-Saharan Africa has a 46% poverty rate and hosts 570 million of the world’s 847 million extreme poor, 2% of the global total, and its trend is rising, driven by population growth that is outpacing income gains.

While the rest of the world bends the curve downward, Asia’s greenhouse gas emissions are racing in the opposite direction, and the gap is widening fast. Global greenhouse gas emissions tell two very different stories depending on where you look.