World Bank: Two and a half billion people live on less than $2 a day

The report issues from an institution correctly identified by great numbers of people around the world as a reactionary pillar of the global financial system. Despite efforts by Bank officials to put the best face on things, that more than two and a half billion people continue to live in unspeakable poverty in the first decade of the 21st century is an indictment of the capitalist system.

Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen, of the World Banks Development Research Group, in a study entitled, The Developing World is Poorer than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty, note that in 2004, for the first time, the Banks global poverty count had fallen below one billion.

They continue: Alas the revised estimates reported in the present paper suggest that our celebrations in finally getting under the one billion mark for the $1 a day poverty count were premature. ... We find that the incidence of poverty in the world is higher than past estimates have suggested.

The 2005 estimates are based on surveys conducted in 116 countries and interviews with some 1.23 million households.

The most dire conditions exist in Sub-Saharan Africa. After a quarter-century (1981-2005) that witnessed the most extraordinary advances in technology, the percentage of people living in absolute poverty in that region remained unchanged; some 50 percent of its population subsists on $1.25 a day or less.

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