Summary ADB has estimated that 1.7 billion people in Asia and the Pacific are living on less than $2 a day.
ISLAMABAD: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has said that fast economic growth has helped to significantly reduced poverty in Asia and the Pacific over the years.
However, much still needs to be done in a region that is home to about two-thirds of the world s poor.
The Asian Development Bank has estimated that there are 1.7 billion poor people in Asia and the Pacific, who are living on less than $2 a day.
While 150 million moved out of extreme poverty from 2005 to 2008, the number of moderately poor, those living between $1.25 and $2 per day - dropped only marginally, by around 18.4 million. Most of those exiting extreme poverty became moderately poor.
The bank said as of 2009, 33.1 per cent of the population in ADB s poorest borrowing countries live on less than $1.25 a day, compared with 23.6 per cent of the population for all ADB countries.
“Poverty remains highest in South Asia, at 83.2 per cent in 1990 and 72.2 per cent in 2008, and is currently lowest in East Asia, where the People s Republic of China (PRC) has achieved the fastest rate of poverty reduction, from 84.6 per cent in 1990 to 29.8 per cent in 2008,”it said.
Between 2005 and 2008, two of the most populous countries in Asia, the PRC and Indonesia, accounted for some 92 per cent of those rising above the $2 per day poverty line - the PRC accounted for 82 per cent of the region s total reduction in the number of poor.
With the transition of India from low income to middle income status, majority or 81 per cent of developing Asia s poor now live in middle income rather than lower income countries.
It further said sixty years ago, Asia was the world s poorest region but it now accounts for a third of the world s GDP and is likely to exceed 50 per cent by 2050.
The Bank added that growing income inequality continues to be a challenge for the region. In the past 2 decades, the Gini-coefficient in Asia - the most common measure of inequality - has risen sharply from 38 to 47. If inequality had stayed stable instead of rising, around 240 million more people in Asia could have escaped poverty.
ADB s developing member countries (DMCs) achieved the 2015 Millennium Development Goals income poverty target as early as 2005.
